Japan's Mail Business to Open to Private Sector

A bill stipulating the creation of a public postal corporation will include a provision calling for the full opening of the mail business to the private sector, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported in its Thursday morning edition, citing Posts Minister Toranosuke Katayama. “Private companies will enter the mail business with the same conditions as the current post office network,” Katayama told the Nihon Keizai Shimbun in an interview. The bill is to be submitted to the current Diet session, the business daily reported. Some Liberal Democratic Party members are dead set against fully opening postal operations to the private sector, but Katayama apparently plans to work out an agreement with the ruling coalition parties, the report said. ‘If private companies are entering on fair conditions, then post offices will have to fight the competition,’ he said. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has instructed Katayama to review a provision, found in existing law on government reorganization, that states that postal operations won’t be privatized. ‘The provision doesn’t prohibit privatization after the transfer of postal services to a public corporation,’ Katayama said. ‘The existence of the provision neither hampers nor jump-starts the matter,’ he said, according to the report.