The head of Japan's business lobby, Masakazu Tokura, said Monday that it was not realistic for the government to ban entry of foreign nationals with the new omicron coronaviruses variant prevalent within the country.
Keidanren, who is chairman of the Japan Business Federation, made a statement during a regular news conference.
The entry ban has been in place since Nov. 30, with Japan confirming its first case of the omicron variant later that day. The entry ban was extended until the end of February earlier this month.
Demonstrations against the tight border restrictions on nonresident foreign nationals have been staged in several countries, with people calling for the government to reconsider the measures they say are not based on science.
At Monday s news conference, Tokura said it was hard to set a blanket level of wage hikes for all firms, a move that was in contrast to Prime Minister Fumio Kishida's call for companies to raise pay to help achieve a sustainable economic recovery.
He said that there are not uniform levels of wage hikes for all firms, because business conditions vary from company to company.
Tokura said that the prime minister took this point into account when he said that companies that saw profits increase in wages by 3%.
Kishida has been putting pressure on firms to raise wages as part of an effort to prop up growth and distribute more wealth to households.
At the last year s labor talks, major Japanese companies offered the lowest wage increases - below 2% -- in eight years, as the COVID-19 epidemic hammered corporate profits.