After Yamagiwa’s resignation, ex-health minister is Japan’s new economy chief

Tokyo:  Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Tuesday appointed former health minister Shigeyuki Goto as economic revitalization minister to replace Daishiro Yamagiwa who resigned over his ties with the controversial religious sect, Unification Church.
Goto, 66, a ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) lawmaker, will assume the ministerial post later in the day and will be charged with compiling a new economic package to combat surging prices and lead debates on the funding of a supplementary budget, reports Xinhua news agency.
Kishida said Goto, a seventh-term lower house member who joined the Finance Ministry in 1980, was appointed on the back of his experience in politics and his skills as a communicator.
For his part, Goto, who was named health minister in October last year when Kishida formed his Cabinet, said he will work steadily to tackle rising prices as well as to respond to the yen’s weakening which is further inflating costs.
Yamagiwa’s resignation a day earlier marked the first for a Cabinet member under Kishida.
He had been under increasing pressure from the public and opposition parties to step down for his links to the controversial sect.