Press Conference by Minister Saito (Excerpt)

*Note: This is a provisional translation for reference purposes only.

10:17-10:22 a.m.
Friday, March 1, 2024
Press Conference Room, METI Main Building

Opening Remarks

Bill for partially amending the Consumer Product Safety Act and other Acts

I will tell you about three points.
First, a Cabinet decision was made today on a bill for partially amending the Consumer Product Safety Act and other Acts. The expansion of internet transactions has increased opportunities for domestic and overseas businesses to directly sell products to consumers in Japan via online malls and marketplaces.

Against this background, there are problems such as the lack of entities responsible for product safety in Japan and that the safe use of toys and other products for children is not properly ensured.

Responding to those environmental changes and problems, the bill aims to take measures for ensuring the safety of products directly sold from overseas and prevent accidents caused by products for children.

The administrative staff will explain the details of the bill later.

Basic policy for promoting business to solve regional challenges

Second, zebra companies, which aim to strike a balance between solving social challenges and achieving economic growth, are businesses that may become new leaders in the regional economy by transforming social challenges into growth engines. Today, the basic policy compiling key points in business models to create many zebra companies is to be published.

METI will endeavor to disseminate the basic policy and conduct demonstrations centered on zebra companies in regions to establish business models and methods of evaluating their social impacts so that ecosystems for creating zebra companies are developed in individual regions. The administrative staff will also explain the details later.

Price Negotiation Promotion Month

Third, March is Price Negotiation Promotion Month, as has already been announced. In order to achieve sizeable wage hikes in SMEs, which employ 70% of the labor force in Japan, price negotiations and price pass-through are the key. We are at a critical point of whether we will be able to completely get out of deflation.

We would like order-placing companies to respond favorably to negotiations with business partners on price pass-through, which will also contribute to strengthening supply chains as a whole. In order to spread the price pass-through movement to the very end of the supply chain, these companies are expected to encourage business partners to have further negotiations on price pass-through with their subcontractors.

SMEs, or order-receiving companies, are expected to utilize the guidelines concerning labor costs, which were published last November, and boldly make requests for price negotiations. Today, we published a leaflet compiling key points for order-receiving companies’ price negotiations on the website of the Small and Medium Enterprise Agency. We hope that the leaflet will be fully utilized. Additionally, my video message was made available on METI's YouTube channel. Please access it as well.
That is all. Thank you.