The Fair Trade Commission will soon begin a followup survey over business practices in the flat-glass industry, Jotaro Abe, director of the FTC's executive office, said Wednesday.
"It has been five years since we completed our initial investigations and we would like to see whether proper improvements have been made," he told a regular news conference.
"Although distributors are supposed to be free to handle imported flat glass, the foreign share still remains as small as 5 percent, which includes the imports from Japanese manufacturers' overseas affiliates," he said. "We've been hearing complaints that foreign access to the Japanese flat-glass market remains limited."
Flat glass is one of the areas in which the United States has been continuously voicing concerns over anticompetitive business practices. The upcoming followup survey will be the third of its kind since the FTC announced its initial survey results in June 1993.