“Gold sales by Japan’s biggest bullion retailer surged 63 percent to a five-year high as prices slumped and investors sought refuge from Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s campaign to stoke inflation and weaken the yen. Abe’s plans to raise the sales tax to 8 percent from 5 percent in April to address the nation’s swelling public debt also encouraged gold purchases by local investors in 2013, said Kate Harada, general manager of the precious metals department at Tanaka Kikinzoku, a unit of Tanaka Holdings Co. Consumer prices excluding fresh food — the Bank of Japan’s key gauge — rose 1.2 percent in November from a year earlier.”
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