[Provisional Translation]

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe held the eighth meeting of the Council on Investments for the Future at the Prime Minister's Office.
At the meeting, debate took place on the agenda aimed at promoting the fourth industrial revolution and the opening of public assets and services to the private sector.

Based on the discussion, the Prime Minister said,

"Artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, and big data will continue to connect people and products like never before. This will give rise to new value, and enable us to solve previously unsolvable problems. We will become the first country in the world to realize Society 5.0.
The strengths of Japan are our "monozukuri" or manufacturing, our rich amount of data, and our need to solve problems brought about by our aging population and falling birthrate.
We will continue to focus the investment of government resources into fields that utilize such strengths.

Successful innovation all depends on speed. When systems do not consider the possibility of new technology, there are no opportunities for trial and error, and little data can be created to prove safety and so on. Yet without such data, systems cannot be changed. It is a chicken and egg problem. If this continues to be the case, we will be left behind by the rest of the world.
We will therefore make trial and error possible, limited to certain participants and time periods. In other words, we will try out new ideas. We have received a proposal for the creation of a Japanese version of a regulatory sandbox. We will create a new framework that will allow us to incorporate the achievements of innovation into society as soon as possible.

When technology changes, the skills that workers are expected to have change as well. Even if the number of conventional jobs decreases due to the introduction of artificial intelligence and robots, companies that make full use of these technologies will create new, high-quality jobs.
We will enhance support for providing further learning opportunities so that people can update their abilities in order to continue to use IT over the course of their lifetimes. We will ensure that university curricula can meet the needs of the new era, such as by offering data science education programs for all students, regardless of whether they come from humanities or science backgrounds, or by expanding engineering programs across different faculties. 

Regarding the opening of public assets to the private sector, we will continue to advance a cross-governmental system in order to roll out successful case studies in airports and roads to other promising fields such as sports facilities, cultural facilities, and cruise facilities, and to promote the opening of public assets in a full-fledged manner.
The Council on Investments for the Future has been debating a variety of issues toward the construction of Society 5.0 since September of last year. I would like the relevant ministers, led by Minister Ishihara, to accelerate discussion toward the formulation of the new Growth Strategy."