Koizumi to send team to Germany
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi proposed Monday to send a Japanese team to a German postal firm to observe privatized postal services.
The proposal is apparently intended ultimately to help create a more favorable mood for the privatization of Japanese postal services, one of the premier’s pet projects.
Former government minister Kiyoshi Mizuno, an active supporter of the project, quoted Koizumi as describing the plan to Klaus Zumwinkel, chairman of the board of management at Deutsche Post AG, in a meeting at Koizumi’s office.
Zumwinkel promised Koizumi he would help the delegation survey privatized postal services if the plan is realized and that lawmakers opposing Koizumi’s project would also be welcome, said Mizuno.
But Koizumi mentioned no time frame for the plan in the meeting, Mizuno said.
Mizuno formerly headed the Management and Coordination Agency, one of the predecessors of the Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications.
Deutsche Post is a private company established from a governmental body through a public cooperation, a process Japan is seeking in the project to privatize its postal services.
The meeting came after a package of bills related to privatizing the state-run postal services was submitted to the Japanese parliament earlier this month.
The bills are to allow private firms to begin offering mail services and to establish a new public corporation in 2003 to take over the three postal services — mail, postal savings and “kampo” life insurance.
Koizumi, who heads the dominant Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), said privatizing the postal services is a key pillar of his structural reform scheme.
But some LDP members with vested interests in the sector have stiffly opposed privatization. Lawmakers have yet to begin parliamentary debates on the bills and it is uncertain that the Diet can pass them before the ongoing session ends June 19, as Koizumi’s administration wishes.
