Press Conference by Taro Aso, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Finance, and Minister of State for Financial Services

(Excerpt)

(Friday, December 20, 2013, 11:50 am to 12:04 pm)

[Questions and answers]

Q.

Regarding the issue of loans by financial institutions to Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO), some are saying that future loans should be uncollateralized. The issue with TEPCO is the form in which the public and financial institutions should share the pain, and I think the issue relates to the health of financial institutions. What are your views?

A.

At the very least, the problems at TEPCO’s Fukushima nuclear power plant have brought considerable suffering not only to large numbers of local residents but also to residents of surrounding areas. It’s not really possible to make one company, TEPCO, solely responsible for compensating all those people and taking action to help them. I think this has been obvious for the last two and a half years, but the method employed by the last Cabinet, forcing responsibility for everything onto TEPCO, didn’t work. Things still haven’t been resolved even after all this time. It was the national government that originally promoted nuclear power so aggressively. It was national government policy, so in that sense I don’t think it’s acceptable for the national government to act as though it has nothing to do with us. So I’ve always said that the national government should bear some of the responsibility for taking proper action to address this problem. For that reason, I basically feel that it is naturally difficult to avoid the national government playing a role in helping TEPCO to resume the stable provision of electric power and in swiftly regenerating the Fukushima region. So we are going to be working together, with financial institutions also playing their part, but for that reason, discussing what kind of basis this will be happening on is something for private businesses, and it is not appropriate for me to comment on. Having said that, if the government doesn’t take proper action, Fukushima Prefecture residents and the region will be left behind, and the problem will drag on for years. This would affect tourism for the Olympics and so on, and newspapers and so on might exacerbate things unnecessarily by spreading harmful rumors. For that reason, to ensure that clear facts are released in a proper fashion, and to solve the problem as soon as possible, if financial institutions can help, we hope that they will do as much as they can.

(End)