Deliberations on controversial pension reform bills finally resumed at a Lower House welfare committee Wednesday as the opposition parties sharply criticized a government plan to transfer the management of pension assets worth 140 trillion yen from the Finance Ministry to the Health Ministry.
The package of bills, which would gradually reduce the future benefits paid by the public pension system, also includes one allowing the Health and Welfare Ministry to manage the pension assets as part of the Finance Ministry's reforms of the "zaito" fiscal investment budget, starting as early as fiscal 2001.
The opposition parties argued that Health Ministry bureaucrats are not qualified to manage such huge amounts of money, and that the pension assets would make the ministry one of the biggest institutional investors in the world.