The Ministry of Transport is steadily implementing the items incorporated in the Deregulation Package Promotion Plan (Three-Year Plan) decided by the Cabinet in March 1995, and of the 219 items as of the end of March 1996 151 items (or approximately 70 percent of the total) had been implemented in full. Furthermore, in consideration of the "Emergency Strong Yen and Economic Action Plan" of April 1995, the "Immediate Administrative Reform Promotion Measures" of December 1995 and other policies, the ministry has made efforts in the direction of accelerating the timing of implementation, clarification, and actualizing the implementation details. The status of the measures regarding the primary items (including the actualization of measures continued into fiscal 1996 as well) is as listed below. With regard to the basic Ministry of Transport policy (advanced autonomously since April 1993) of reducing the number of license permits by 20 percent within three year's time (1,966 such permits as of March 31, 1992), this has been achieved through the revisions and notices by the concerned government offices in March of the current year.
(1) Truck Business, etc.
Revisions in Regulations Concerning Truck Terminals and Bus Terminals (Bill submitted to current regular Diet session for partial revision of Motor Vehicle Terminal Law.)
- With regard to entry regulations for the motor vehicle terminal business, investigations will be conducted on the licensing system from the perspective of maintaining safety and terminal function, with deregulation of the licensing system.
- Simplification has been carried out on the procedures for work execution, use fees, and regulations on special-use motor vehicle terminals.
- With regard to vehicle ownership through lease, finance-lease ownership has been approved only for parties which have been in business for three years or more. This restriction has been lifted, with maintenance-lease ownership also approved.
- At the present time, 11 expanded operation zones are established. On April 1 of this year this was expanded by two operation zones with the addition of Yamaguchi Prefecture to the Sanyo Zone, and of Kyoto Prefecture to the Hanshin Zone.
- From here on, operation zones will be expanded on block units, based on a firm grasp of the operation administration conditions and confirmation of the ability to carry out such expansion in an appropriate manner.
- During fiscal 1996, the sphere will be expanded for which the requirement that cost statements be appended to preliminary notification of freight charge revisions is dropped. Specifically, it will also be made unnecessary to append a cost statement to notifications when lowering prices within a set range.
- With regard to the minimum vehicle unit standards at regional transport bureaus, from the perspective of lowering the minimum to a uniform five units nationwide, on April 1 of the current year corrections were made in the gaps existing in the minimum vehicle unit standards between different regional transport bureaus. Specifically, the minimum vehicle unit standards were lowered for 44 percent of nationwide municipalities.
- From here on, the minimum number of units will be gradually lowered to five units, based on a firm grasp of the operation administration conditions and confirmation of the ability to carry out such reductions in an appropriate manner.
- The methods used to compute supply-demand trends, the computation results and other information will be clarified to create greater transparency in supply-demand adjustments. Furthermore, efforts will be made to promote greater flexibility on the operation front, so that even if the results of supply-demand computations reveal instances of over-supply (and this is within a set sphere expressed in advance), the situation will be handled through the disposal of licenses or other means which address the local circumstances. (Actualization of measures in fiscal 1996.)
- With regard to licensing of car pool taxis, in order to enable the introduction of a unrestricted boarding and alighting system, demand route orientation and other diversified operation formats, efforts will be made to mount prompt and flexible responses to individual cases without adhering to conventional operation formats.
- From the perspective of instilling greater energy in the business, efforts will be made to ease licensing standards, simplify procedures, etc.
- With regard to lease permit applications, a change has been made from requiring permits from the separate land transport branch bureaus holding jurisdiction over the location of each office, to requiring only the permission of the director of the land transport branch bureau with jurisdiction over the location of the head office.
- From July of last year, implementation of so-called "inspection before check and maintenance" was made possible in the inspections conducted by the government. Carried out in addition to this has been simplification of periodical check items, extension of the motor vehicle inspection certificate validity period for private-use passenger cars and other vehicles over 11 years in age, elimination of six-month checks on private-use passenger cars, and other measures.
- With regard to extension of the inspection certificate validity periods for trucks and other business use vehicles, private-use passenger cars, rent-a-cars, etc., studies will be conducted in fiscal 1996 on the strength of investigative research by persons of learning and experience, user representatives and other concerned parties.
- With regard to extension of the inspection certificate validity periods for farming use tractors and other large-size special-use motor vehicles, studies will conducted of the use conditions, accident status and other circumstances for each separate vehicle type, with these results taken into consideration in devising necessary measures.
- Working through the studies of the "Passenger Fare Problem Research Group" established in January of last year, and a total of nine studies by the "Passenger Railway Fare Working Group" from August of the same year, they reached a conclusion on February 23 of the current year. The specific contents of this conclusion include the following measures, which are aimed at strengthening the system:
- Introduction of an upper limit price requlation based on the full-cost principle.
- Strengthen the yardstick system.
- Improvements in such as extension of targetted years for revenue-cost balancing cost computation methods.
- Simplification of the related procedures.
- Disclosure of cost computation systems, business contents, other information.
- In addition to this, studies will be continued on the upperlimit price requlation, taking into consideration future changes in the railway business environment and other factors.
The Ministry of Transport will deal with the issues on the basis of this conclusion.
- Container vessels and RORO vessels will be excluded from the System by the end of 1998F.T, With regard to other ships, the schedule to be excluded from this system would be realized after reviewing the accomplishment of measures taken over a five years period to elimenate any obstacles against this goal with support and cooperation of shippers.
- With regard to coastal shipping freight rate agreements, with the exception of the Okinawa and Sakishima route freight fare union (which were implemented from the perspective of maintaining daily service), the agreements will be phased out from fiscal 1996 through fiscal 1998 based on considerations for the characteristics of the various agreements. In this case, with regard to elimination of the coastal tanker freight rate agreement and the coastal chemical tanker freight rate agreement, new measures will be devised with the objective of preventing abuse of the prominent position held by shippers. (Fiscal 1996 through the end of fiscal 1998.)
- From the perspective of the diversification of freight rates and efforts by aviation operators to promote greater business efficiency, introduced in December 1995 were broad freight rates under which aviation operators receive inclusive licensing within a set range using the standard cost as the maximum value for each route, and are then permitted to autonomously set freight rates within that range.
- This program is being promoted on the basis of maintaining safe operation, rooted in consideration of the progress made in airport development and on other fronts. In fiscal 1995, the shift to triple track operation was made on the three routes of Osaka-Fukuoka, Osaka-Naha, and Nagoya-Fukuoka. This has brought the percentage of total passenger traffic to 75 percent.
- [* The Bill was approved by Diet and promulgated on May 9,1996.]
- With regard to the government certification scheme concerning aircraft safety, efforts will be made to expand the sphere of government inspections which can be abridged through the involvement of peivate sectors and the utilization of certificaition of export countries.
Unification of government certification for aircraft safety, and for noise and other engine emissions.
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