Japan should quintuple the size of its bank bail-out scheme to Y10,000bn from Y2,000bn, Kaoru Yosano, the country’s economics minister, said on Sunday.

“Right now we can use Y2 trillion [Y2,000bn] but that’s probably insufficient . . . whether we use it or not, we should have around Y10 trillion [Y10,000bn] available,” Mr Yosano said on Japanese television. A bill to authorise capital injections into banks has only just been submitted to parliament.