Privatizing the post office is designed to increase profit opportunities for banks: Akahata editorial, May 22, 2001

Prime Minister Koizumi is moving toward setting up a conference to discuss privatizing three post office businesses -- the postal delivery service, the postal savings system, and the postal insurance system. Takenaka Heizo, state minister in charge of economic, fiscal and IT policy, stated that privatizing postal administration should be on the agenda of the meetings of the government advisory panel on economic and fiscal policy.

Banking industry has issued that signal

The proposal to privatize postal administration is Prime Minister Koizumi's sole plank, but its mastermind is the banking industry.

This is why the president of the Bankers Association of Japan greatly welcomed the prime minister's proposal as aiming at what they have long been calling for.

When the current Diet session opened, the prime minister made an enthusiastic speech denouncing the government's post office businesses for hampering the business of private enterprises. This is exactly what the banking industry for many years has been calling for as the main point in favor of privatization.

This argument can be boiled down to the selfish desire of the banking industry to collect more deposits if the postal savings system does not exist.

Prime Minister Koizumi in the House of Representatives Welfare Committee meeting on February 29, 1997 said, "The three post office businesses are the most lucrative with a large profit on sales if they are turned into a stock company." The banking industry joined in the chorus, saying that privatizing post office businesses will directly contribute to rehabilitating national finances (BAJ Report, January issue).

The proposal is completely wrong because it allows enormous wasteful expenditure to be continued on construction-obsessed public works projects and call for post offices to be sold off in the name of fiscal rehabilitation, although they are in the interestof the people.

Major banks have already accepted 27 trillion yen (211 billion dollars) out of the 70 trillion yen (570 billion dollars) public money earmarked for them. To correct this setup would be the most direct contribution to fiscal rehabilitation.

Prime Minister Koizumi said that privatizing postal administration would be the finishing touch to financial market liberalization, and Economic, Fiscal and IT Policy Minister Takenaka Heizo called for the people's safe savings to be put into the stock market to take risks. People prefer postal savings to banks and stock because they are greatly concerned about the present financial system. Trouble is all that the proposal means to the people.

Koizumi's call for the privatization of the post office is geared to guarantee bigger profits for the banks and major corporations, while paying little attention to public convenience.

In Japan, post offices and public mailboxes are established in every municipality, including remote corners and isolated islands. They are public assets available to everyone at cheap cost, offering basic communications and correspondence, financing, and insurance.

In their daily living the people depend on post offices. The overwhelming majority are saying that the post office is the "most reliable of all financial institutions" in a public opinion survey by Nikkei Kin'yu, released on Jan. 9.

Many people choose the post office because they know that post offices are something they can count on. They are seen as different from city banks which pursue the greatest possible profit, charging commissions from customers with small accounts. This is a key role of post offices as "people's banks," which no one can expect from city banks.

For the government to privatize the post office as a private-sector corporation giving profit priority means exterminating post offices as we know them.

Koizumi's policy of cutting the weak

Prime Minister Koizumi is now explaining that the privatization is not intended to "scrap post offices" but "will provide users with various new services." But, if they are privatized under the profit-first policy, postal services will be likely to be cut in unprofitable areas as has been the case with the banks, and services and charges will not be maintained at the same level nationwide.

His "privatization" plan surfaced in accordance with the argument of downsizing postal savings which appeared an a commercial banks' association report. The abolition of the postal savings system is the real aim of the banking industry.

The call for the privatization of the post office (which pays little attention to the needs of the public) stands for what Prime Minister Koizumi calls "reform to put down the weak and help the strong." (end)