Tag: Japan

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.”

The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications said Friday it has granted a request by Japan Post to buy a controlling stake in Asocia Corp., a wholly owned trucking arm of department store Daimaru Inc. In its first corporate acquisition, the postal services corporation has been permitted to buy a 67.6 percent stake in Asocia in the near future for 650 million yen, turning the Osaka-based trucking company into a subsidiary. The trucking company’s lines of business at present include storing, packing and delivering gifts on behalf of Daimaru and its group companies.

The government again submitted postal privatization bills to the Diet – about 50 days after Japan’s upper house scrapped them – and hopes they pass in mid-October. The bills were submitted to the House of Representatives after being endorsed during an extraordinary Cabinet meeting in the morning. Postal privatization is a centerpiece policy of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s structural reform drive. The fresh bills are almost identical to those the House of Councillors rejected Aug. 8, when opponents of them, including members of Koizumi’s Liberal Democratic Party, voted against them. They are certain to pass the ongoing special Diet session as Japan’s governing coalition of the LDP and New Komeito party took more than two-thirds of the lower house seats in the Sept. 11 general election. The special Diet session convened last week for a 42-day run through Nov. 1. Upper house LDP rebels have recently changed their stance and now support the bills.