Tag: Japan

The board of Japan Post Corp., the company formed in January to prepare for the privatization of Japan’s postal system, appointed its eight executive officers Tuesday, including Sakon Uda, principal at McKinsey & Co., and Akira Uno, former chairman of SMBC Consulting Co., company officials said. Most of the other new executive officers come from Japan Post, the public corporation for postal services, and the Financial Services Agency, according to the officials. The appointments will take effect on March 6 for Uda and March 21 for the others. The selection of the executive officers is designed to expedite the ordinary operations of the new stock company, industry sources said. The company’s management is still having difficulty selecting the presidents of four new companies to be set up to handle mail delivery, post office operations, postal savings and insurance services in the course of the privatization starting in October 2007.

Japan Post has decided to stop mail delivery and collection at 1,000 primarily rural post offices by October 2007, when postal privatization begins, sources said. Currently, about 4,700 of the nation’s 24,600 post offices provide those services. The cuts are being planned despite a statement by Heizo Takenaka, state minister in charge of postal services privatization, that “in principle, post offices in underpopulated areas will be preserved.” Labor unions and others have expressed concern that, in underpopulated and rural areas, the cuts would reduce the frequency of mail collection and delivery. Post offices where mail delivery and collection would be terminated would continue over-the-counter services.

Japan Post, the state-run postal services provider, would accept any proposal to liberalize the delivery services of mail of a certain weight and above in order to promote private firms’ participation in the business, its president indicated Wednesday. “We’ll liberalize stage by stage,” Masaharu Ikuta said in a press conference. There have been no private firms engaged in letter and postcard delivery services under the current system as strict conditions are set. They include requiring those who want to start the services to locate at least 100,000 postboxes nationwide.