708-Chaudhari Technical Institute, Gandhinagar - Gujarat ...

long-term planning has been a major force in the functioning of the Japanese
economy. According to the economic objectives of the government, various
policy measures have been used to shift the allocation of resources among
industrial sectors and to influence the organization of specific industries.
Control has been underpinned by the detailed regulation of business
activities, particularly in the financial sector. However, by the early 1990s
reducing government intervention in the economy had become a major
objective of the authorities. This was viewed as a way to create new business
opportunities and as a necessity for making Japanese domestic markets more
accessible to foreign business, thus revitalizing what was then a moribund
economy. A number of deregulation packages to remove and ease controls
subsequently were introduced and implemented.
In the 1980s the government relinquished to the private sector its monopolies
over the tobacco and salt industries and domestic telephone and telegraph
services, and the publicly owned Japanese National Railways was privatized
as the Japan Railways (JR) Group. Most of the remaining public corporations
are special-purpose entities (e.g., for nuclear power generation) that would be
unprofitable to operate privately or are government financial institutions. The
government also retains an interest in radio and television broadcasting. It
remains active in matters deemed to be of strategic interest, notably nuclear
power generation, which is subsidized through a major program to increase
generating capacity.
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