Toward Starting of National Strategic Special Zone

* Written by Eiji HARA, PPPC President

 The bill to establish the National Strategic Special Zones was

approved in the last extraordinary session of the Diet. Accordingly,

on December 20, there was an announcement of five private sector

members of the “Special Zone Advisory Council” including Heizo

TAKENAKA, Tatsuo HATTA and Ken SAKAMURA.

 The National Strategic Special Zone is a plan to conduct regulatory

reforms within some districts experimentally. There were similar

institutions of special zones in the past, however, for limitations

caused by intermediary clerical coordination by the government

ministries, they could hardly cut their way into highly regulated

fields often dubbed “bedrock.”

 The aim of new Special Zone is to serve as breakthrough toward these

fields. One of the mechanisms to ensure such implementation is the

“Headquarter of Special Zone” (legally “special zone committee”)

to be established in each Zone. The committee serves as “independent

mini-government” where comprised of the minister-in-charge, local

leader and private sector members gather. The committee directly

receives on-spot voices on needs of regulatory reform. Then the

minister-in-charge takes the needs to the abovementioned Special Zone

Advisory Council for consideration. There, the minister-in-charge of

Special Zone and the minister having jurisdiction of said regulation,

along with private sector members, will have discussions and the Prime

Minister will finally decide how to advance the issues. As such, it

was designed to bypass oppositions from “the iron triangle” (of

bureaucracy, politicians and industry) with the bureaucracy at its

core.

 The legislation enacted this time entailed “relaxation of bed space

regulation,” “clarification of employment conditions,” “lifting

ban on publicly-owned privately-managed schools,” “exceptional

measures on floor-area ratio restriction,” “relaxation of

requirements for establishing agricultural corporations,” etc., as

particular initial menu of regulatory reforms to be applied in the

Special Zones (further menu will be added by the above process). All

of them are the bedrock regulations which past administrations

attempted to tackle with and failed. While some media reported these

menu are small-scaled, they are just criticisms rooted from ignorance.

 The reason behind the fruitful advancement was that discussions on

the framework of the Special Zone Advisory Council took the lead in

substance. The unimaginably distinguished members including Taichi

SAKAIYA (special advisor to the Cabinet), TAKENAKA (chief in charge of

the Industrial Competitiveness Council) and HATTA (chairperson of the

National Strategic Special Zone Working Group) formed a de facto

“negotiation team” without leaving discussions on selection of

reform menu and on coordination process between ministries, and gained

the final decision at the Prime Minister’s office in a meeting with

Prime Minister Abe and relevant ministers.

 The next phase is how the leaders operate the institution. The

Cabinet will be tested whether and how they open the breakthrough with

the Advisory Council as its arena after January.