Two advisory committees for Shinzo Abe’s Administration, the Council for Regulatory Reform and the Council on Investment for the Future, held a joint meeting on October 6 to make recommendations on structural reforms in such fields as price cuts of farm inputs as well as distribution and processing channels of agricultural products.
The two Councils proposed Abe’s Administration should introduce a bill to persuade related industries, including those of farm-input manufacturers and rice wholesalers, to respectively reorganize themselves.
The Administration was also advised to review existing regulatory systems by abolishing regulations based on legislation governing developments of seeds and farm machinery as well as the Wholesale Markets Act.
In the context of reorganization of farm-input manufacturers, it was recommended by the Councils that ZEN-NOH (National Federation of Agricultural Cooperative Associations), agricultural cooperatives’ (JAs’) national business organization, should carry out drastic reforms in its both systems of purchasing farm inputs and marketing farm products.
The Government and ruling parties will make a decision in November to work out measures on the basis of the recommendations made by the Councils.
The recommendations include a number of proposals on various reforms. In the field of farm inputs, the Government is required to periodically inspect self-regulations of the manufacturers for the purpose of streamlining their business operations.
As for companies of fertilizers and livestock feedstuff, it is also recommended that they should realign their respective industry and promote capital investment by consolidating their factories.
In the field of farm machinery, the Councils suggested venture-capital companies should be invited to join the industry.
And the Councils also asked the Government to submit a bill, which provides not only for government’s responsibility to implement the regulatory reforms, but also for procedures of reorganizing industries concerned, to the ordinary Diet session set to convene next January.