As the government works to submit a bill to the next yeakar’s ordinary Diet session to revise the Agricultural Co-operative Society Law, Motoyuki Oka, head of the government’s Regulatory Reform Council, said on Monday, Dec. 15 that the panel will strongly urge the government to abolish legal authority of agricultural co-operatives’ central and prefectural unions to audit member co-ops (JAs).
At the panel’s meeting held earlier in the day, the panel’s agriculture working group submitted its proposals regarding the review of agricultural co-ops. The proposals include taking away legal authority from central and prefectural unions to audit primary JAs and introducing restrictions on the use of JAs by non-farmer members.
Oka, also senior advisor of Sumitomo Corp., told a press conference after the meeting that the panel will monitor government discussions to make sure that agricultural co-ops reform and the creation of farmland consolidation banks will make steady progress.
Especially regarding agricultural co-ops reform, Oka said the panel will carefully follow debates within the government so that the bill to revise farm co-ops will reflect the panel’s proposals.
Oka said the panel attaches the greatest importance to “clearing away several areas which are given an exclusive right or overly protected under the law,” pointing to the legal authority of JA’s central and prefectural unions to audit primary JAs.
(Dec. 16, 2014)