Tag: Japan

Japan Post said Friday some 10,000 automatic withdrawals from postal savings accounts failed over four business days from Jan. 4 due to a computer system glitch.

The trouble emerged as Japan Post made some modifications to its computer system to prevent erroneous money transfers on Jan. 4, it said.

Japan Post reverted to the previous configuration on Thursday and the system has worked properly since, it said.

Japan Post has apologized to users of the automatic money withdrawal service for the inconvenience and been in contact with them over how to implement the transfers.

The failed transactions were among a total of about 34 million money transfer orders issued over the four business days. The amount of money involved is not yet known.

As a result of the system malfunction, 1,243 users were unable to receive payments such as utility and credit card charges.

Japan Post said it is investigating the specific cause of the system failure.

More than 70 pct of post offices across Japan, mainly those in sparsely populated regions, were unprofitable in fiscal 2005, Japan Post reported Friday.

At total of 14,404 post offices, or 71.2 pct of 20,223 offices nationwide, incurred losses in the fiscal year that ended last March, down by 3,750 from the previous year. The drop is the first since the disclosure of the office-by-office breakdown of business performance started in fiscal 2003.

The number of profitable post offices increased to 5,819.

The total excludes post offices whose operations are consigned to nonprofit organizations.

The latest data provide a fresh indication that Japan’s postal services are maintaining loss-making operations in less populated regions with the help of profits earned in urban areas.

Turning around the unprofitable offices will be a major challenge for the company that will inherit the management of the post office network from Japan Post in a 10-year breakup and privatization process of the government-owned corporation that begins in October 2007.

By prefecture, post offices in 12 prefectures registered profits in fiscal 2005, including Tokyo, Saitama, Kanagawa, Aichi, Osaka and Fukuoka. The remaining 35 prefectures were in the red, with the cost-to-revenue ratio exceeding 140 pct in six prefectures–Hokkaido, Iwate, Akita, Shimane, Kochi and Kagoshima.