Prime Minister Shinzo Abe held the fifth meeting of the Committee on the National Space Policy in 2013 (14th in total) at the Prime Minister's Office.

The Prime Minister said in his address,

"I would like to make this year the base year for 'space use.' Key items of the space policy will be industry promotion, and Japan-U.S. cooperation and security. To do this, we need to 'shift the focus from traditional R&D to usage expansion, which looks ahead to the end outcome' as well as 'maintain the capacity to carry out space activities independently.' This requires 'allocating limited resources to priority areas and injecting private-sector funds' and 'tapping into private-sector and overseas demand.'  
Therefore, in line with this concept, I would like to ask the Committee on the Space Policy to set forth guidelines regarding priority allocations and ascertain the ministries in charge, and identify a clear order of priority for the programs. Please follow-up on this. At the same time, we need to further strengthen the space policy promotion scheme with the Cabinet Office taking a central role and acting as the control tower.
I would like to ask Minister Yamamoto to coordinate carefully with relevant ministers to ensure that ministries make budget requests in accordance with the budget allocation guidelines."