Koizumi's postal panel agrees on 3 privatization plans
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s private advisory panel on the state-run postal services agreed Tuesday to propose three options for privatizing the services in the future in its final report to be compiled in early September.
The three privatization plans were drafted by panel chief Naoki Tanaka, who is an economy critic.
The first plan is to privatize the three postal services of mail delivery, postal savings and kampo life insurance without changes.
The second plan calls for abolishing the savings and insurance operations, while the third plan envisages the creation of a special company wholly owned by the government.
Tanaka also proposed during the panel meeting that the privatization of a planned new public postal corporation should take place only after seeing its business performance through the end of fiscal 2006.
The discussions were joined by Koizumi and Toranosuke Katayama, minister of public management, homes affairs, posts and telecommunications.
It was the panel’s eighth formal meeting, six months after the previous meeting in February.
The panel held closed-door unofficial meetings while the Diet was deliberating a set of bills on reforms to postal services that were enacted on July 24.
The laws, to take effect from next April 1, are designed to turn the Postal Services Agency into a state-run corporation and allow private firms to enter the mail delivery business.
But the laws place strict conditions on would-be mail delivery operators, requiring them to provide the same services as the current public system, and therefore no companies have expressed willingness to enter the ordinary mail delivery field.
On Monday, Koizumi picked Masaharu Ikuta, chairman of Mitsui O.S.K. Lines Ltd., as the first head of the public corporation to be established next April to take over the postal agency.
Koizumi told reporters Tuesday he is thankful to the panel for discussing privatization plans despite there being many opponents to privatization in political circles.
Some heavyweights in Koizumi’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party are opposed to privatization.
The premier said Tuesday it is the cabinet’s policy to privatize the postal services.
AP-NY-08-27-02 0123EDT
FDMSKYviaNewsEdge
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