Japanese LDP panel to put lower priority on mail privatization bill

A Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) panel discussing postal deregulation agreed at a meeting Wednesday to place lower priority on a bill allowing private firms to enter mail services and to focus on a bill for a new public entity to take over state-run postal services.

The move goes against Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, an advocate of privatization of postal services, who had been eyeing discussions to be held simultaneously on both bills for submission to the Diet by late April.

“We have almost reached a conclusion to hold separate discussions on the two bills,” Yamato Inaba, head of the panel, told reporters after the meeting.

He said the panel at its next meeting will begin full-fledged discussions on the creation of the public postal entity by 2003, as stipulated under the law on reform of central government ministries and agencies. “We will set up the public entity in 2003,” he said.

Koizumi has called for both bills to be enacted simultaneously so that private companies could start mail services at the same time that the new public corporation is launched.

Some LDP members are strongly opposed to Koizumi’s vision to privatize the three postal service operations of mail delivery, postal savings and “kampo” insurance because of their vested interests in postal services.