Japan Post's mail service in big debt excess

Japan Post said Friday its mail service had a debt excess of 578.2 billion yen at the time of the public corporation’s establishment on April 1.

In January, before Japan Post came into being, its mail service was estimated to have a debt excess of 391.3 billion yen. But subsequent evaluations of land holdings and post offices across the nation resulted in the larger debt excess.

Japan Post’s entire capital as of April 1 came to 1,268.8 billion yen, according to its balance sheet.

Of services other than mail, the corporation’s “Yucho” postal savings business had assets exceeding debts by 1,804.4 billion yen, while its “Kampo” postal insurance business had 42.6 billion yen in net assets.

With the value of its assets totaling 415 trillion yen, the capital-to-asset ratio of Japan Post stood at 0.3 pct.

The capital-to-asset ratio of the postal savings business alone was 0.62 pct, with assets totaling 291 trillion yen.

Japan Post separately said that its postal savings business had a latent profit of 2,099.7 billion on investments as of the end of June, while its insurance business had a latent profit of 1,686.8 billion yen. The combined profits came to 3,786.5 billion yen.

The postal savings business had 230,606.2 billion yen under management, while the insurance business had 120,741 billion yen.

Since the public corporation took over in April the securities holdings of its predecessors, the Postal Services Agency and Postal Life Insurance Welfare Corp., latent profits of those securities have increased due to rises in stock prices.

Japan Post revealed data on the two services’ fund management for the first time. It will make similar announcements every three months.