Tag: Asia

Japan’s lower house passed a set of controversial postal privatization bills Tuesday, giving a stamp of approval to Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s economic reforms. The government resubmitted the bills to privatize Japan Post after Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s Liberal Democratic Party of Japan (LDP) won a landslide victory at the September 11 general election. Koizumi’s key reform project passed the lower house in a plenary session by 338 to 138 votes, an expected result with the ruling coalition of LDP and the New Komeito party holding more than two-thirds of the seats in the lower house. The upper house is expected to approve the legislation Friday.

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi expressed his intention Tuesday to loosen conditions for companies to launch postal services by allowing them to operate fewer postboxes than stipulated by law. Japan’s postal services are under the control of a state-backed entity, Japan Post. The mail delivery law, enacted in 2003 to set rules for entry into the business by private firms, requires new entrants to provide at least 100,000 postboxes nationwide. The government “will create an environment to start the business as easily as possible,” Koizumi told the Budget Committee of the House of Councillors. “There is no need to fix the number at 100,000.”