The Tokyo stock market might be riding two-decade highs, but a growing number of Japanese are choosing to stash their cash in the humble home safe, wary of negative interest rates in the bank and out of the view of eagle-eyed tax officials.
It is no secret that Japan has some of the world's biggest savers, learning from an early age to put aside some of their hard-earned wages for a likely long retirement. However, cautious households who already put away more than half their nest-egg in cold hard yen, are increasingly bringing the cash home. Part of the reason is a longstanding savings culture. But the Bank of Japan's move to usher in negative interest rates last year and changes to the tax code have propelled demand for alternatives to keeping money in the bank.
And that has seen home safes that cost from as much as 20,000 yen ($180) fly off store shelves, with sales surging by a fifth last year. Demand is so strong that staff at one Tokyo outlet of Bic Camera have hauled the steel boxes from the back of the shop to a prime spot right near the escalators. That dovetails with a recent Bank of Japan study that found investors socked away no less than half of their combined 1.8 trillion yen savings in cash.
-AFP, Tokyo
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