An advisory panel to Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi adopted a 10-year plan Monday to convert the economy into a society based on knowledge and ideas.
Projecting an projects an annual economic growth rate of 2 percent in real terms through 2010 and an unemployment rate between 3.5 percent and 4 percent, the Economic Council said in its report that values produced by knowledge and ideas should be the new driving force for Japanese growth, corporate profits and personal satisfaction.
Individuals should be able to fully utilize their capabilities within a social system that emphasizes free, market-oriented economic activities, the council said.
Here are 12 of the council's proposals for turning Japan into a knowledge-based society:
1) Comprehensive reform of distribution systems;
2) Improvement of information and telecommunication systems;
3) Greater options in selecting schools;
4) Allowing more skilled foreign workers into the country;
5) Creating a basic plan to promote manufacturing technologies;
6) Promoting employment of elderly workers;
7) Establishing a basic policy to cope with the problem of decreasing child population and aging society;
8) Creating an economic system based on reusable resources;
9) Dispatching more information to the world;
10) Establishing a medium-term policy on official development assistance;
11) Revamping the nation's fiscal state;
12) Introducing an administrative system based on larger regional blocs, instead of the current one based on prefectures.