Finance Ministry alters Nakagawa's slurred performance on website

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TOKYO, Feb. 18 Kyodo -
The Finance Ministry has corrected and modified the written record of the
erratic performance of former Finance Minister Shoichi Nakagawa at his press
conference after the Group of Seven advanced economies' meeting last weekend in
Rome, the ministry's website showed Wednesday.
Nakagawa quit as finance minister Tuesday to take responsibility for causing
troubles by ''not managing (his) health well,'' in a move that came after he
denied he had been drunk at the press conference.
At the news conference, Nakagawa said Japan would offer $1 billion to the Asian
Development Bank. But, according to the website, he intended to say Tokyo has
decided to offer the loan to finance trade between developing economies
''through the (state-backed) Japan Bank for International Cooperation and in
cooperation with the ADB.''
Nakagawa also made a mistake when explaining the Bank of Japan's current key
interest rate, saying the benchmark borrowing cost has been guided to a range
of ''zero to 0.25 percent'' despite the fact the target rate is at 0.1 percent.
The ministry dropped that part as a whole from the written record of his press
conference posted on the website.
''We have made similar modifications and supplements with necessary words
before in order to make what speakers said understood appropriately,'' the
ministry's public relations official said, stressing the move is a ''normal
response.'
==Kyodo
2009-02-18 23:08:13