Panel hands final privatisation report to Koizumi
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s private advisory panel on the state-run postal services handed Friday to the premier a final report proposing three options for privatizing the services in the future.
Having received the report, Koizumi now aims to drum up support for privatizing the three postal services of mail delivery, postal savings and kampo life insurance.
Like administrative and fiscal reforms, postal reforms are also a main vein of structural reforms. Based on the report, I will tackle the privatization eagerly, Koizumi told a meeting of the panel held earlier in the day.
But given strong opposition in some circles in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, it remains to be seen whether debate on privatization will proceed smoothly, political analysts said.
The report by the panel, headed by Naoki Tanaka, a leading commentator on economics, welcomed the government’s move to turn the Postal Services Agency into a state-run corporation next April and allow private firms to enter the mail delivery business.
But the report says there is a need to reform postal savings and life insurance services as they have distorted the flow of private capital and attracted funds disproportionately into the public sector.
The first plan included in the report is to privatize the three postal services 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.
The degree of urgency of postal reforms is very high, Tanaka told reporters after the day’s meeting.
Masashi Teranishi, chairman of the Japanese Bankers Association, said bankers welcome the report in that it proposes the abolition of state-run postal savings system as one option.
The report can be valued highly as it marks a starting point for postal service reforms, Teranishi said in a statement.
Shinichi Yokoyama, chairman of the Life Insurance Association of Japan, said he wants the postal life insurance service to be abolished and the whole postal system to be completely privatized.
