A new finance minister was named in Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda’s third cabinet reshuffle this year, a move seen as an attempt to regain political clout ahead of general elections, Financial Times reports.

Former parliamentary affairs chief for the Democratic Party of Japan, Koriki Jojima’s appointment comes amid a global downturn and a sharp rise in yen that threatens to push Asia’s second-largest economy off the edge. According to the Financial Times, Japan’s fiscal policy will likely remain unchanged under Mr. Jojima who also backed Mr. Noda’s tax and social welfare reforms.

“Presumably he will follow the current government’s stance on fiscal policy,” Hiroshi Shiraishi, economist at BNP Paribas in Tokyo, said. “But the the end of the day this cabinet probably won’t last long”.

Analysts have pointed out that the reshuffle would not significantly impact Japan’s government policy given that the ten new ministers in place are Mr. Noda’s “allies”, Reuters reports.

“I doubt if Noda took into account the need to put the right person in plac,” chief Japan economist at Barclays Capital Kyohei Morita said. “The fact that he can reshuffle the cabinet so many times in a year indicates that bureaucrats, not politicians, guide policies including currency intervention”.