Riddled with debt, the city of Kyoto impatiently awaits the return of tourists and questions its finances. As in 2020, autumn, a season prized for the beauty of its landscapes tinged with the red of maple trees and the yellow of ginkgo trees, will have been desperately calm in the former Japanese capital. Two-thirds of the businesses lining the alleys leading to the red wooden gate of Kiyomizu Temple had their curtains drawn. Attendance at major hotels has not exceeded one third of what it was in 2019.
The winter is not looking much more lively, the government having postponed to February 2022 the relaunch of the Go To Travel tourism support program, which is currently being redesigned. “To make it safer in terms of health”, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida explained on Wednesday 10 November. And the borders remain closed to foreign visitors.
Launched for the first time in 2020, this campaign, which subsidized half of travel costs, reimbursed in part in the form of vouchers for local products, had met with great success but fostered an explosion in Covid-19 cases and aroused sarcasm, finding himself baptized “Go To Covid” Where “Go To Heaven” (“Go to paradise”).
Humiliation
For Kyoto, the prolonged collapse in tourism – down 88% in 2020 compared to 2019 – is weighing on the city’s income. The deficit for the fiscal year ended March 2022 is expected to be around 50 billion yen (about 383 million euros), which will be added to the 860 billion yen of accumulated debt. If the trend continues, annual losses could reach 260 billion yen in 2025.
The situation forced the mayor, Daisaku Kadokawa, to discuss, in August, “The possibility of bankruptcy in the coming decade” and to announce a restructuring plan. It plans to cut 550 jobs in the administration by 2025 and cut social assistance, in particular by reducing funding for home care. What to save 160 billion yen, according to the city council, and to avoid bankruptcy, synonymous with taking over the finances of the city by the state. A humiliation already experienced by several municipalities of the Archipelago, such as Yubari, in Hokkaido (North).
The city must assume the reimbursement of one of the two metro lines of the city, the Tozai, inaugurated in 1997 but whose attendance remains below expectations.
Beyond the savings announced, and even if, according to a good connoisseur of local affairs, “It is difficult to imagine the large companies in the region, like Kyocera, Nintendo or Omron, abandoning the city”, Kyoto seems compelled to thoroughly review its finances, whose problems have been overshadowed by the boom in tourism.
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