Deliveries face cuts in Japan’s post sale: Reduced service would raise anti-privatisation clamour
The Japanese government may consider cutting mail deliveries from daily to every other day in some districts when it privatises the post office in 2007, an adviser to the sell-off said.
Any proposal to dilute the post’s “universal service” could enrage the public and provoke parliamentary opposition to the sale, which will be discussed in what is expected to be a charged Diet debate in March.
Most Japanese – including many within the Liberal Democratic party of Junichiro Koizumi, the prime minister – see the network as a vital service.
As well as delivering mail through a dense branch network, the post office is the biggest financial institution in the world, with assets of Y350,000bn (Dollars 3,418bn) in its savings and insurance arms. It employs one in three civil servants.
Mr Koizumi has made privatisation the central plank of his final two years in office. His advisers regard the post office as a manifestation of the paternalistic state they blame for stifling growth and innovation.
Opponents of privatisation demand strict adherence to the universal service concept to guarantee that a privatised post office would not cut service to remote communities. The post office’s network of 24,000 branches is 45 times bigger than that of Mizhuo, Japan’s largest bank.
Naoyuki Yoshino, who heads a panel in charge of drafting postal reform, said the notion of universal service could be open to interpretation. “Universal service does not mean the mail will be delivered every day . .. maybe every other day.” Mr Yoshino said the government’s guarantee of maintaining a minimum number of branches in each municipality could be met in remote areas by using mobile offices.
Kobo Inamura, executive vice-president at Japan Post, said the comments were “astonishing” and “degrading” to the postal service. “We deliver door-to-door, even in the very remotest communities.”
Mr Inamura said mobile post offices were used in emergencies such as earthquakes but were not suitable for everyday use. “In addition to postal services we are providing nationwide cash savings and insurance services. That is the core idea of the universal service.”
Some 70 per cent of Mr Koizumi’s LDP, which has close links with the powerful postal lobby, opposes privatisation, according to Patricia Maclachlan, a postal reform expert at the University of Texas at Austin. Privatisation plans will pit the government against 20,000 postmasters and unions representing 280,000 workers, all of whom are set to lose their public-sector status.
* TPG, the Dutch mail, express and logistics group, yesterday said it was in exploratory talks with Japan Post to investigate “potential areas of co-operation”, writes Ian Bickerton in Amsterdam.
The Dutch company said it was too early to comment on where the talks might lead or whether it aimed to establish a venture similar to its partnership with China Post. Its TNT express delivery unit operates in Japan.
