Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's economic strategy, Abenomics, has been successful in boosting corporate investment and promoting female employment, but has not done much to boost corporate pay. Data released by Japan's Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare on Wednesday (February 7) that in December 2017 real wages fell 0.5% over the previous year. This is less than the 0.1% increase in November and the largest drop since the 1.1% decline in July 2017. Some analysts pointed out that this may indicate that consumers will cut spending, and bring more trouble to the central bank to reach the 2% inflation target. Weak wage growth also shows that the government is not easy to convince businesses to agree to pay a minimum of 3% increase in pay this year when negotiating annual payroll with the union. Foreign media reports pointed out that at present many Japanese companies are still reluctant to use the record high cash reserves for a pay raise, because of concerns that it is difficult to pass on the cost of salary costs to consumers. Shuji Tonouchi, senior market strategist at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities, said: "This has been a problem since Abenomics was introduced, and it is very difficult to achieve the government's 3% salary growth target."