At a press conference on the afternoon of the 9th, Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara said that in response to the temporary rise in long-term interest rates in the Tokyo market to 2.9 percent, a level not seen in about 30 years, the government is watching market trends with an extremely high sense of urgency and will do everything possible in its economic and fiscal management. Regarding the view that concerns over the aggressive fiscal policy of the Ishiba administration are causing the rise in interest rates, he stated that it is a forward-looking fiscal policy and that the government will not pursue an excessively expansionary scale that would undermine market confidence.