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

(Tuesday, December 9, 2014, 9:04 am to 9:23 am)

[Questions and answers]

Q.

In a campaign speech for the lower-house election that you made on the 6th, you said that there are problems with the management capabilities of companies that aren’t profiting from higher stock prices and the weaker yen. Could you tell me what you meant by this?

A.

On the subject of management, I myself ran a medium-sized company, a coal-mining company. As for management, because of the energy revolution, we had to close the mines. As for work, because of the changes in our operating environment, our company closed its mines. Big mines. We mined in Chikuho till the end, but all the mines around us closed. I was in an area that saw a sudden population decline, so I understand that small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are in a difficult situation. For us, management capabilities are, at the very least, about being able to stay in business as the environment changes in various ways, from deflation to inflation, from inflation to deflation, from a strong yen to a weak yen, and so on. And given that we are obviously implementing Abenomics, when I was put in charge of the Financial Services Agency (FSA), I told the staffs that the FSA supervisory policy should abandon placing priority on collateral when smaller regional financial institutions make loans to SMEs. Simply demanding collateral spoils good seeds and good shoots, so with the aim of nurturing SMEs, I remember saying in my first January message after my appointment that the image of the FSA is as the “Financial Punishing Agency,” but that I wanted efforts to be made to change its image to a “Financial Nurturing Agency.” At any rate, SMEs are an extremely important element in the revitalization of regional economies, and I think FSA is the closest organization to regional banks, secondary regional banks, and credit unions. So to make the provision of financing smoother, Abenomics must be rigorously implemented, and I recall that I was summing up what I’ve been saying here. So this was what I meant by that.