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IT Brightens Japan's Economic Gloom
by William New
A top Japanese official visiting Washington this week gave a dour outlook for Japan's economy in the next six months but identified some positive signs in that nation's information technology sector.
The official, Heizo Takenaka, is the minister of state for economic and fiscal policy and minister of state for IT policy, as well as the principal adviser to Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. Takenaka told the National Economists Club on Monday that while Japan will continue to improve its productivity and efficiency in the sector, the falloff in demand for IT products such as semiconductors will continue to hurt.
Japan also is promoting greater competition and less regulation in communications industries and tackling IT illiteracy, he said. "We are going to have a first-class IT nation in five years or so," Takenaka said. Currently, 37 percent of Japanese are on the Internet, which is lower than the penetration rate in the United States and most Asian nations.
Takenaka said Japan is prepared to promote bilateral or regional arrangements for investment and free trade as a complement to multilateral liberalization such as at the World Trade Organization. He noted an economic partnership agreement between Japan and Singapore, and a recent meeting of IT ministers in the Asian region that he organized to share best practices and address the "digital divide" between technology haves and have-nots.
Takenaka said Japan should continue foreign direct investment in other Asian economies and promote domestic investment through structural adjustment of its own economy.
Mindy Kotler of the Japan Information Access Project said of the visit that Takenaka is "trying to impress the U.S. with how much it is a political problem before it is an economic problem" to turn the economy around. The underlying message, she said, is that in order to emerge from economic straits, Japan must continue with its effort to break up strongholds of power such as government corporations.
Information technology is helping with this transition, a Japan analyst said, because it is politically neutral, fast and efficient. The sector is dominated by the under-40 crowd and has a stronger presence of women, who are "wresting the power from the guys doing the backroom deals," the analyst said. And Koizumi is using information technology to make government more transparent -- by publishing an e-mail magazine of available government documents, for instance.
GAO: Safety Plan For Mexican Trucks Lacking
A new General Accounting Office (GAO) study has found that the Transportation Department has not met criteria to allow Mexican trucks beyond commercial border zones. As a result, department officials have said they are unsure when they will be able to fully open the border, despite a Bush administration pledge to do so by this month.
The issue dates back to ratification of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Under that trade deal, the United States agreed to allow Mexican commercial trucks to travel throughout the country by January 2000. It failed to do so out of safety concerns, but a NAFTA arbitral panel ruled in February 2001 that the United States was violating the agreement, so the Bush administration announced that it would give Mexican trucks access by January 2002.
In the new law to fund Transportation programs in fiscal 2002, Congress increased funding for safety activities related to Mexican trucks and imposed requirements for the department to meet before allowing trucks beyond commercial border zones. The GAO report, completed in late December and released Tuesday, said Transportation has not yet met certain safety criteria, including some related to technology.
The requirements include deploying advanced technology to weigh trucks, electronically verifying Mexican commercial drivers' licenses, and providing available staff and space for inspections. The GAO found that five different databases of safety records on commercial drivers and motor carriers are fully functional. But one of the databases, on commercial drivers' licenses, contained only 23 percent of an estimated 300,000 federal licenses as of October 2001.
GAO added that due to a variety of impediments, such as high-priced insurance and long delays at the border, few Mexican trucks are expected to take advantage of the opportunity to travel within the United States anyway. Delays could be shortened with an automated clearance system using electronic documentation, it said.
Executives Rush To Join AeA Spring Trip To China
Executives from member companies of the electronics group AeA are flocking to sign up for a trip to China to see firsthand how that nation will comply with international trade commitments and to establish business contacts.
After little more than two days, AeA had 18 interested executives for 50 slots for the trip scheduled for the week of March 11, according to AeA vice president Tim Bennett. "We've got people from across the country responding," Bennett said Tuesday. "It reflects the importance of China to our industry, and that the long [World Trade Organization] process is over and the long implementation process is now beginning."
The trip was timed to follow China's accession to the WTO, and Chinese government officials will tell executives how they will meet obligations made during the accession process. Executives either will visit the Beijing WTO Affairs Consultation Center, one of eight such educational centers, or attend a meeting on WTO implementation at the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation.
Robert Bigony, senior vice president at Motorola, will lead the trip. Executives will meet with Chinese officials in Beijing, particularly from the Ministry of Information Industry, which oversees most tech policy. They also will tour a Motorola facility in Tianjin that makes phones, two-way radios and base stations, meet with IT procurement officials responsible for the 2008 Olympics, meet with embassy officials and businesses, and hear a panel presentation by journalists and other observers on economic and political changes within China.
AeA is the chair of the U.S. Information Technology Office in Beijing until April 2003. The joint consultative and networking office also includes the Computer Systems Policy Project, Information Technology Industry Council, Semiconductor Industry Association, Telecommunications Industry Association, and Software and Information Industry Association.
A Time To Educate ... And Be Educated
The European Commission thinks it might have struck the right balance between engendering the competition in technology transfer that it argues is so important to innovation and the protection of intellectual property rights. Now it wants public comments.
On Tuesday, the commission adopted a report outlining competition rules that include treatment of software-licensing agreements and licensing pools. The process could lead to a commission proposal for new competition rules on licensing agreements in the second half of 2002, according to a commission statement. The comment period ends April 26.
In other news, the E-Commerce Working Group of the U.N. Commission on International Trade Law will hold its next meeting in New York on March 11-15. A draft report on e-contracting has been published for discussion.
And the U.S. Telecommunications Training Institute will offer 83 tuition-free courses in 2002, with the aim of leveling global communications gaps. The courses, offered to communications officials and entrepreneurs from developing countries, will focus on satellites, spectrum management, wireless services, broadcasting, the Internet, telemedicine, privatization, competition policy and distance learning.
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