The Japanese Finance Ministry's top bureaucrat said Monday that the government and the central bank need to discuss whether an inflation target is necessary and whether it would work. "There are various issues, including its need and its effectiveness. They ought to be thoroughly debated," Vice Finance Minister Koichi Hosokawa told a regular press conference. He was asked about comments over the weekend by Liberal Democratic Party policy chief Hidenao Nakagawa at the World Economic Forum in Davos calling for a 2% inflation target and for longer-term goal of 4% to 5% gross domestic product growth.