Finance Minister Urges Pension Funds to Buy More Domestic Assets

Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama said on July 11 that the government would pursue policies to encourage pension funds to buy more Japanese assets, The Japan Times reported. The statement prompted an immediate jump in the yen. Japan’s largest public pension fund, the Government Pension Investment Fund, is unlikely to shift its allocations in the short term.

The GPIF follows a rigid investment framework reviewed only once every five years. Its most recent review, completed in 2025, kept a 25 percent allocation to each of four asset classes: domestic stocks, foreign stocks, domestic bonds and foreign bonds. The next review is scheduled for 2030.

Any earlier change would require an established process. The fund’s statutory mandate requires it to maximize long-term returns for pension beneficiaries, so any increase in domestic holdings would need to be justified on investment grounds rather than policy goals. Overseas assets have outperformed domestic assets in both equities and fixed income over the past decade.