Most door-to-door parcel delivery companies in the nation remain dissatisfied with a set of bills designed to create a public postal corporation.
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi reiterated his determination to have the bills passed to promote private sector entry into the postal service, when speaking at a House of Representatives Committee on Public Management on Tuesday.
TPG NV said it officially launched its 50/50 joint venture with Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp Group (SAIC) to provide logistics services to the automotive industry in China.
The joint venture was announced in September.
TPG reiterated that the venture will employ more than 600 people and have annual sales of about 100 mln eur. Operations had been expected to commence in March 2002.
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi appeared to make a major concession Tuesday on passage of a package of bills designed to reform the national postal system.
He previously had said the reforms would be a “milepost toward eventual privatization.”
But in a Lower House committee deliberating the postal system legislation Tuesday, Koizumi said no limits should be placed on the debate following the shift in status of the Postal Services Agency to a government-owned public corporation from April 2003.
Read MorePostal savings accounts are increasingly popular, but the prospect of post offices being able to offer loans to rural enterprises threatens to undermine one of the few solvent branches of China’s financial system.
By now, China watchers are well aware of the bad debt problems plaguing the country’s large state-owned banks, but other areas of the financial system are facing troubles of their own.
One especially vulnerable but poorly understood sector is China’s network of rural credit co-operatives (RCCs), which have traditionally supplied credit to farmers and township enterprises. Chinese financial officials, who are normally very cautious about disclosing information on the level of bad loans, admitted several years ago that the RCC sector as a whole had negative net worth, and the small size of individual RCCs has left them vulnerable to depositor panics.
President Keiji Aritomi on Tuesday criticized a letter delivery bill for tightening the government’s grip on the business.
Before a House of Representatives committee, Aritomi said the bill would restrict even the catalog delivery service, which is now open to the private sector.
Yamato Transport, Japan’s parcel delivery company, has made clear its intention of not joining the letter delivery service that will be open to the private sector if the bill clears parliament.
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