Tag: Japan

Masaharu Ikuta, president of Japan Post, said he has not be notified of any government plan to split the postal service into three units as part of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s push to privatise the operation.

‘I am not aware of any plan to split Japan Post into three units under a holding company,’ Ikuta told a news conference when asked about a report in the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Japan’s leading business daily.

The Financial Services Agency is considering introducing as early as next fiscal year a system that will enable the Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission to inspect Japan Post’s investment trust operations, officials at the financial watchdog said Tuesday.

The FSA has signaled its intention to allow post offices to sell investment trusts — financial products similar to mutual funds –but to apply the same inspection and regulatory measures to post offices as those applied to private financial institutions, they said.

Japan Post, which holds a quarter of the nation’s savings, will have to compete with banks, insurers and other deposit-takers starting in 2007, said Economy and Fiscal Policy Minister Heizo Takenaka.

“We’ll be privatising Japan Post in 2007,” Takenaka said. “Privatising means that it has to compete completely on its own with the private sector.”