Summit Notebook
Exclusive outtakes from industry leaders
Perils of disaster fixation
By Tim Kelly
Fixated on reviving the shattered northeastern seaboard, Japan risks neglecting growth in the rest of the economy, warns Takeshi Niinami, CEO of Lawson, Japan’s second-biggest convenience store operator.
“The question is what do you do about the other 95 percent of the economy,” Niinami told the Reuters Rebuilding Japan Summit in Tokyo.
His remedy: throw Japan open to the rest of the world and deregulate, policies more in vogue before Japan’s March 11 earthquake than since.
Niinami wants Japan’s politicians to rediscover their pre-quake appetite to thrust Japan into trade pacts either with Southeast Asian economies or the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a policy that Prime Minister Naoto Kan enthused about at the start of the year but since March 11 has dropped.
Opening up Japan is not just about letting foreign people, ideas and capital in, he says, but also about companies moving out.
