The Democratic Party of Japan submitted a counterproposal Monday to the government's postal privatization bills, pledging to abolish the postal life insurance and a postal deposit certificate system by Oct. 1, 2007.
The House of Representatives will start deliberating both sets of bills in a plenary session Thursday.
The DPJ hopes its package helps it regain credibility as a reformist party following its lopsided defeat in the Sept. 11 Lower House election.
Opposition to Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's postal reform plan has been cited as the main reason the DPJ fared so poorly.
The party's new bill advocates no longer accepting new deposits into the postal system's "teigaku" savings system nor accepting new customers in the life insurance business by the end of September 2007, while gradually halving the limit on the overall amount of postal savings per depositor to 5 million yen.
Under the DPJ's proposal, Japan Post would remain in charge of mail delivery and own 100 percent of a postal savings firm and numerous postal life insurance entities to be launched when privatization starts Oct. 1, 2007.
Japan Post would keep its postal savings stake but ensure that the life insurance entities are completely privatized by October 2012 by disposing all of their shares.
Earlier in the day, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and the government agreed to collaborate on getting their own bills through the Diet by the middle of the month. The bills are expected to sail through the Diet on the strength of the ruling coalition's two-thirds majority in the Lower House.
Under the government's bills, Japan Post would be broken up on Oct. 1, 2007, into four entities -- one each to oversee mail delivery, insurance, savings and over-the-counter services.