TOKYO (Nikkei)--Japan will work closely with Thailand to come up with a comprehensive reconstruction plan for the Southeast Asian nation, which has been devastated by massive floods this year.
The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) is set to help create flood-control measures, while the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) will support reconstruction by helping Thailand issue yen-denominated bonds in Japan.
Thai Deputy Prime Minister Kittiratt Na-Ranong, who chairs the government's water resources management committee, and other government officials will visit Japan early next week to discuss these plans with their Japanese counterparts, a high-ranking Thai government official said. JICA will start drafting flood-control measures for the Chao Phraya River, which flows through Bangkok, in December. Thailand's rainy season begins in June, so operations will be conducted according to varying degrees of urgency.
The protection of Bangkok, the national capital, is the country's top priority. This demands the introduction of measures such as building new canals to channel floodwaters into the Gulf of Thailand. Some officials have even proposed expanding the width of the Chao Phraya River further upstream from the capital. Such construction projects will focus mainly on Ayutthaya, a city north of Bangkok that was extensively damaged by the floods.
The Thai government has estimated total flood-related damages at 400 billion baht (about 1.1 trillion yen), but local media reports place the figure at 900 billion baht. The Thai authorities are also considering issuing about 100 billion yen in Samurai bonds to cover reconstruction efforts. JBIC, meanwhile, plans to guarantee Thai government bonds to help finance reconstruction projects and may even underwrite some of the bonds itself. (The Nikkei Nov. 25 evening edition)
Japan's Participation In TPP Talks Seen Pushed Back To Spring
TOKYO (Nikkei)--Japan is unlikely to join negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement until spring at the earliest due to delays by the U.S. to start the approval process.
For Japan to join talks for the regional free-trade pact, it needs approval from the U.S., Australia and all seven other negotiating nations. Japan faces huge hurdles in getting approval from the U.S. in particular. The conventional timeline entails two to three months of prior consultations between the U.S. Congress and government, followed by 90 days' notice of intent to Congress.
Prior to advance congressional deliberations, however, the U.S. government will seek opinions from industry groups and others. It will garner feedback about Japan's participation in the TPP over a month or so, but as of Wednesday, the government had yet to do so in its register. So it appears unlikely that consultations will begin this year, given that they will not start until the government has finished soliciting feedback.
During the consultations, the Japanese government will field questions from the American side about such matters as policy toward opening its markets. Likely agenda items include imports of U.S. beef and trade barriers on auto imports to Japan.
Washington has welcomed Japan's decision to participate in TPP talks. But there is some backlash, including from the American Automotive Policy Council.
(The Nikkei Dec. 1 morning edition)
TOKYO (Nikkei)--As Japan's farm industry fights a rear-guard action against the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade talks, one seedling company, Berg Earth, sees an opportunity for more business abroad.
Kazuhiko Yamaguchi founded the predecessor to Berg Earth Co. 15 years ago. On Tuesday, the company went public on the Osaka Securities Exchange's Jasdaq market. "I would like to show that by injecting capital and personnel from the outside into Japan's closed agriculture, (the industry) still has growth potential," Yamaguchi said at a press conference the same day.
Berg Earth plans to use the funds from the share listing to set up its fourth wholly owned farm in Japan, which is set to begin operating next spring in Ibaraki Prefecture.
Berg Earth's strength lies in creating hardy seedlings by grafting in different varieties. Grafting a fruit-bearing seedling onto one that has strong roots and disease resistance, for example, can produce a seedling that combines both characteristics. Farmers have known about grafting for hundreds of years. The company's trick has been to mass-produce seedlings of uniform quality.
Berg Earth divides its horticulture into discrete steps -- soil preparation, planting, bud-nurturing, grafting, sorting, shipment, and quality control -- all of which help it to "industrialize" its business.
Experts in each step work together, creating a system that allows seedlings to grow quickly. This lets the company offer a steady supply of products in terms of quality and quantity, which is a challenge facing Japanese agriculture as a whole.
Green shoots
After finishing high school, Yamaguchi took over his family's farm, switching from vegetables to more profitable flowers in the early 1980s. Soon, however, the flower business hit a wall and he switched to growing seedlings for fruit trees and vegetables in 1986. He devoted himself to developing strong seedlings with a higher value.
Gradually his seedlings became well-known and he expanded his sales area beyond his native Ehime Prefecture to neighboring Kochi Prefecture, where greenhouse agriculture is more prevalent, and then to Kyushu.
But there was one big hurdle. Seedlings are often damaged in transport and they must be delivered to customers within a day. From his location in the city of Uwajima on western end of Shikoku island, Berg Earth could only reach so far within a day. By improving his seedlings so that they do not wither even if delivery takes more than a day, Yamaguchi was able to expand his market significantly.
Berg Earth Co. President Kazuhiko Yamaguchi held a press conference Tuesday, after the company went public on the Jasdaq market.
In 2001, Berg Earth incorporated and joined with 17 other farms, allowing for a stable supply chain and further expansion. For the year ended October, the company expects sales of nearly 3.3 billion yen. It has set a sales target of 4 billion yen by 2014.
But Yamaguchi's ambitions do not stop there. He is looking to make inroads overseas and is already scouring the Chinese market for business partners who could grow seedlings in China. He has visited the country twice this year, eyeing new growth opportunities.
"China's technology in greenhouse horticulture is still 10-30 years behind that of Japan. There is a lot of room for improvement, so exporting Japanese technology is viable," said Yamaguchi. Japan's agricultural production has been declining steadily since the 1990s. The value of Japan's agricultural output in 2009 dropped 4.9% on the year, about three-quarters of its 1980s peak. Although farmer cooperatives are adamantly opposed to the TPP, worried about a flood of cheaper imports, Yamaguchi sees potential for growth in Japan's agriculture if the industry takes a different approach. With the share listing, Berg Earth has put its money where its mouth is.
--Translated from an article by Nikkei staff writer Shinichiro Unozawa
(The Nikkei Business Daily Nov. 30 edition)
TOKYO (Kyodo)--The Japanese Diet approved Wednesday a bill that would enable the government to raise income tax for up to 25 years to secure funds for reconstruction work following the March earthquake and tsunami.
The bill, approved last week by the House of Representatives, was voted in favor by the House of Councillors, with Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda's ruling coalition obtaining the cooperation of major opposition parties that dominate the upper house.
The Diet has already enacted the government's 12 trillion yen third extra budget for the current fiscal year through March to cover mainly the additional costs for rebuilding the areas in northeastern Japan that were devastated by the March 11 disasters, which also triggered the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
The tax hikes, some of which will start next April, will come as Noda wants to use the money to service special government bonds. He has refused to issue new debt without ensuring that the government has sufficient funds to redeem it in order to improve the country's fiscal health, the worst among major developed countries.
Japan's gross government debt is projected to approach 230 percent of its gross domestic product in 2013, pushing public finances further into "uncharted territory," said a report released Monday by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
The tax increase will help gather funds that the government needs to intensely implement reconstruction programs over the next five years.
The government plans to increase personal income tax for 25 years from January 2013, despite concerns by economists and some lawmakers that this would hurt the already fragile consumer confidence in Japan.
Among other taxes to be raised, the government will first cut the corporate tax rate and then raise it for three years from April next year in a way so that the new rate would not top the previous one. The move will effectively support Japanese companies as Noda wants to give them an incentive to remain operating in the country at a time when more firms have been lured to shift their production abroad, given the stronger yen, which has made Japanese exports more expensive than those from its Asian rivals.
The approved bill also stipulates that the government sell some of its assets to secure non-tax revenues for reconstruction work, including its stake in Japan Tobacco Inc.
(The Nikkei November 30 edition)
TOKYO (Nikkei)--Businesses are gradually shifting their backbone systems to cloud-computing services, with a view to better protecting their data against disasters and streamlining their management.
One such firm is Japan Tobacco Inc. (2914), which is pushing to drastically revamp its information infrastructure. Under the slogan of "shift to a cloud-based management system," the firm plans to bring together by the end of fiscal 2014 100 data systems -- spanning human resources to finance to ordering -- to a data center that will serve as the common data infrastructure for all group companies in Japan.
JT will lease 200 computer servers for this purpose, about half the number it currently owns. The move is expected to slash its operating costs by 30%, but the firm has a bigger goal in mind.
"We aim to speed up our management to gain an edge over our rivals in international competition," said Hisayuki Hikichi, head of JT's IT division.
Easy integration
Serving the cloud: Rows of computer servers fill a data center. The company generates half of its group sales overseas, the result of a buying spree that included the purchase of RJR Nabisco Inc.'s overseas tobacco business and major British cigarette maker Gallaher. JT has been using cloud services at its overseas offices for the past decade, integrating the systems of the companies it acquired into its cloud-based infrastructure.
With cloud services, when the firm needs a new system as part of reorganization efforts, it can introduce the system across the board simply by changing the software used at the data center. "With the integrated HR management system in place, we can swiftly shuffle personnel across national borders," said Hikichi.
According to the Ministry of Communications, the market for cloud services will likely reach 800 billion yen for the year ending next March, and will expand to 2.3 trillion yen by fiscal 2015. This is because more businesses are using cloud services not just for e-mails and customer services but for all other business operations as well.
Number cruncher
The types of system functions possible via the cloud are becoming increasingly sophisticated. Analysis of huge amounts of data is one example.
Cookpad Inc. (2193), which operates a recipe Web site, boasts 14 million visitors and 400 million page views a month. The company gleans data on consumer preferences by analyzing enormous amounts of information on what pages consumers have viewed, and sells the data to foodmakers and other companies.
An advanced cloud server operated by a subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc. is what enabled Cookpad to launch the new business. It would take the company a year to analyze the data using one server. "But we can get the job done by leasing 50 high-speed servers from Amazon for only 30 hours," said Kenta Hashimoto, chief technical officer at Cookpad.
In a similar move, Tokyo Realtor Co-operation and another organization will in December overhaul their data management system that contains about 100,000 images and layout plans of rental properties in Tokyo. The two will switch to cloud services offered by the U.S. corporate computing giant Salesforce.com, Inc.
"Cloud computing is flexible in that it can expand or shrink according to the volume of data," said an official at Tokyo Realtor Co-operation.
Achilles' heel
Cloud computing does have a downside, however. Fujitsu Ltd.'s (6702) cloud-computing services came under cyber attacks recently, temporarily incapacitating the company's unified cloud-application services for about 200 government offices, including Fukuoka Prefecture. Because cloud computing concentrates numerous functions, it can have a broad impact on users when a failure occurs.
Still, the shift toward cloud-computing services appears unstoppable.
"We need to take measures against risks, but the merits of using the cloud, including the cost benefits, outweigh the risks associated with it," said an official at the Fukuoka prefectural government.
(The Nikkei Nov. 29 morning edition)
TOKYO (NQN)--Construction orders received by 50 major firms in October increased 24.3% on the year to 729 billion yen, marking the first rise in two years, the Infrastructure Ministry reported Wednesday.
Orders from the private sector expanded 7.1%, also up for the first time in two months. The growth is attributed to large-scale orders from the manufacturing industry following a recovery in capital investment, which sank after the Great East Japan Earthquake. Orders also rose in reaction to the sharp 31.9% fall orders from makers a year earlier.
Orders from the nonmanufacturing industry dropped 10%.
(The Nikkei Nov. 30 edition)
TOKYO (Nikkei)--House Foods Corp. (2810) and other major food manufacturers are developing more products for the elderly and recipients of nursing care, with a focus on palatability. In October, House Foods launched low-protein meals for kidney disease patients receiving home care. The six boil-in-bag meals feature a meat substitute that the firm developed using fiber and other ingredients to reproduce the taste and texture of real meat. Some 3 million people in Japan are said to be at risk of kidney disease that would require dialysis.
House Foods intends to double its lineup of foods for seniors and nursing care recipients, including jelly and pudding, to 25 products this year. It aims to triple sales of such items to about 3 billion yen. Nippon Suisan Kaisha Ltd. (1332) began sales in October of foods for those receiving nursing care. It is offering eight products, including seafood and chicken dishes, in mainly greater Tokyo. Using patented technology, it created dishes that retain the shape of conventional foods but are soft enough to eat without chewing.
Kewpie Corp. (2809) cut prices by 10% in September on 20 of 49 products designed for seniors receiving home nursing care. The company will offer the items to individuals through supermarkets, drugstores and other retailers.
The market for foods for the elderly and those receiving nursing care, including liquid food and jelly, is projected to exceed 100 billion yen this year, according to research firm Fuji Keizai Co. The figure is seen topping 150 billion yen by 2021 as Japan's population rapidly ages.
Liquid food makes up about 70% of this market, and competition over the rest has heated up only recently. Although products for seniors are sold mainly to hospitals and nursing homes, the growth of home nursing care is expected to push up demand for soft foods. Major food producers hope to tap this growth by applying their technologies and marketing techniques.
(The Nikkei Dec. 2 morning edition)
TOKYO (Nikkei)--More Tokyo hotels are raising their prices as room occupancy rates recover from the shock of the March earthquake.
The Shinagawa Prince Hotel's cheapest price, as advertised on its Web site, has risen about 12% from April. Soon after the disaster, rooms were going for less than 10,000 yen a night. With the start of autumn, however, the hotel has priced every room at more than 10,000 yen.
The Royal Park Hotel ended its discount plan last month. The Royal Park Hotel in Chuo Ward ended a 9,800 yen discount plan last month. The Hotel Metropolitan in the Ikebukuro district, meanwhile, has raised the price on a room on the top floor by 2,000 yen from 16,300 yen, the price shortly after the earthquake. Keio Plaza Hotel in Shinjuku has increased the price of its Christmas stay plan about 10% from last year.
Hotels rolled out discounts in the hopes of reversing the plunge in guest traffic following the quake. But their lot is improving gradually. Room occupancy rates at 19 major Tokyo hotels averaged 83.9% last month, topping 80% for the first time since the disaster, although down 1.2 percentage points from a year earlier, a Nikkei Inc. survey shows. In Osaka, the average occupancy rate at 15 leading hotels rose on the year for the fourth straight month, hitting 85.4%.
Foreign tourism is also recovering. More visitors from Hong Kong and Taiwan came to Japan last month than a year earlier, marking the first year-on-year increases since the disaster, according the Japan National Tourism Organization. The number of mainland Chinese tourists bounced back to the year-earlier level.
The average price of rooms booked on Ikyu Corp.'s (2450) reservations Web site for luxury hotels rebounded to 20,969 yen last month, just 1.4% lower than a year earlier. That compared with a 6.7% difference in May.
Still, some hotels continue to offer deep limited-time discounts. "The rebound in prices at midtier hotels has been dull," according to Kakaku.com Inc. (2371), which operates its own reservations site.
(The Nikkei Nov. 30 morning edition)
The Office of Commercial Affairs, Royal Thai Embassy in Tokyo, Japan
Source : http://www.depthai.go.th