Japan Post’s plans to expand before privatisation

Posts minister Taro Aso has backed Japan Post’s plan to expand its business operations before it is privatised in 2007. “I think it is the right direction to make it better prepared for privatisation,” Aso, minister of public management, home affairs, posts and telecommunications, told a press conference. Aso also said Japan Post should have a free hand in its business after the privatisation, saying that it is up to “new management, not politicians and academics, to decide what business should be done.” Japan Post is a public corporation created in April 2003 to take over mail delivery, postal savings and insurance services from the Postal Services Agency. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has put its privatization at the center of his reform drive. The Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy, a key government economic policy-setting panel, is scheduled to draft an interim report on postal privatisation by the end of April.