Japanese PM Wants Postal Change by Late 2002

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi wants to go further in revamping the postal savings and insurance operations than is called for under the current reform plan, aiming to draw up new measures by the end of this year, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported, citing sources familiar with the matter. Under the current plan, the mail service, postal savings and insurance operations are to be transferred to a public corporation, Postal Public Corp, which will be established next year. The government’s Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy will debate specific reform measures on the two financial services from July, and will consider a privatization scheme that would break up the operations by region. The Postal Public Corp will become the world’s largest financial institution, and the prime minister wants to revamp it along with eight other government-affiliated financial institutions. His idea has been already conveyed to Naoki Tanaka, who heads an advisory panel on postal reform. The panel is due to submit in June its final recommendations regarding how the public corporation should be operated.” AFX: “The council will likely study proposals for breaking up the corporation into separate joint stock companies, each running the mail, savings and insurance operations, after which the savings and insurance operations would be divided further into several regional banks.