"There is no change at all at the moment," he said, referring to the plan to increase the levy to 10 percent from 8 percent.
Japan's top government spokesman said on Wednesday he did not think Prime Minister Shinzo Abe would call a snap election although it was up to him to decide.
Speculation
has simmered that Abe might dissolve parliament's lower house and call
an election on the same day as an upper house poll is due in July.
But
the Sankei newspaper reported on Wednesday that Abe was unlikely to do
so after earthquakes in the south last week killed nearly 50 people and
caused considerable damage.
"The premier has been saying he was not thinking at all of dissolving (the lower house), so I don't think he will," Suga told a news conference when asked about the report.
"But it is the prime minister's jurisdiction and it is up to him to decide."
The
Sankei said a double election would put a burden on the quake-hit area
as it seeks to reconstruct its economy and help survivors return to
normal life.
More than 100,000 people on Kyushu
island remain in evacuation centres after the series of quakes measuring
up to 7.3 hit late last week.
Suga repeated that
the government would increase a sales tax as planned next April, barring
a major financial crisis or natural disaster on the scale of an
earthquakes and tsunamis in 2011, which killed about 20,000 people.
Asked if the quakes in the southern island qualified as such as disaster, Suga said that was not the case at present.
"There is no change at all at the moment," he said, referring to the plan to increase the levy to 10 percent from 8 percent.
Suga
also said the government had never considered raising the tax in stages
starting with one percentage point, after the ruling Liberal Democratic
Party's policy chief said in an interview with the Nikkei business
daily that such a move was possible if the economy was weak.
"It is the policy chief's thinking. I don't think there is any change in the environment basically," regarding the tax increase, he said.
Abe
is expected to announce a final decision on the tax increase at around
the time of a May 26-27 Group of Seven summit that he will host.
The
premier had been expected to delay the tax increase, even before the
latest earthquakes. Some private economists said a postponement was even
more likely.
The ruling coalition was also
expected to postpone ratification of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)
trade agreement until the next session of parliament, the Sankei and
other media have said.
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