The third supplementary budget for the current fiscal year, which passed the Diet on Jan. 28, contains more than 1 trillion yen ($9.55 billion) in additional funding for the government’s Go To Travel subsidies program.

Go To Travel seeks to prop up the tourism industry, which has been hammered by the new coronavirus pandemic.

The government and the ruling coalition have rejected the opposition parties’ demand for a revision to the extra budget, which they criticized for being at odds with the nation’s serious COVID-19 situation, marked by high daily levels of new cases.

Initially, the government planned to launch the Go To Travel campaign after the crisis was contained. But it rolled out the program last summer before the virus was brought under control.

With additional funds for the measure secured, we fear the government may make the same mistake by rushing to restart the program.

New, more contagious variants of the coronavirus have also been discovered in Japan. It should be assumed that waves of infections will likely come and go in the coming months.

Experiences in the past six months clearly show that once started it is difficult to suspend or scale back the program even if the virus starts spreading faster due to concerns about the massive hit the tourism industry will take.

The government is showing no signs that it has learned lessons from its misguided move to start the campaign prematurely.

At a news conference on Jan. 26, Yasutoshi Nishimura, minister in charge of responses to the pandemic, said that the program will not be restarted until the infection situation improves to “Stage 2,” the second-lowest category in the government’s four-level COVID-19 alert system.

But that means the government will stick to the conditions decided last autumn for bringing the program back on track without reviewing the developments in the past half year.

The government claims that promoting travel will not spread infections. But some researchers say the number of newly confirmed cases linked to traveling picked up immediately after the program was rolled out.

A tax-financed policy measure to encourage traveling inevitably weakens people’s motivation to make serious efforts to prevent infections in their daily lives.

The government should first make a hard-headed analysis of whether and how the measure to support the tourist industry has caused the expansion of infections.

Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga’s administration has kept its policy for dealing with the pandemic focused on maintaining the levels of economic activities. The Suga administration’s ill-advised policy for responding to the public health crisis has caused the deterioration of the situation to an extent that forced the government to declare a state of emergency for the second time.

The government needs to clarify the causes of the fresh surge in COVID-19 cases and reassess the measures it has taken so far to prevent the spread of the virus. It should then map out a plan to shore up the flagging economy that is consistent with the findings.

The second state of emergency has delivered a heavy direct blow to many tourism-related businesses.

While the measure may have to be in place for an extended period of time, the government has yet to map out an alternative plan to support the sector as it has been fixated on the Go To Travel campaign.

The Suga administration should readjust its COVID-19 policy to the basic fact that containing the virus is the most effective way to support the tourism industry.

It needs to break away from the conventional approach to responding to an ordinary economic downturn, which involves using taxpayer money to stimulate demand, at least until the virus is under control.

The suspension of the program has created an opportunity for the government to reconsider its policy efforts to rescue the industry from the ground up.

As the pandemic has caused declines in travel spending and other expenditures by consumers, the total amount of bank deposits at the end of last year spiked 9.7 percent from a year earlier, accelerating from a 2-percent rise registered at the end of 2019.

When the pandemic comes to an end, demand for travel will rebound vigorously.

For now, the government should focus on efforts to make that happen as soon as possible and provide effective support to related businesses until then.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Jan. 31