Prime Minister Shinzo Abe held the 23rd meeting of the Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy at the Prime Minister's Office.

During the meeting, discussion took place on social infrastructure, national resilience, educational facilities, and other matters.

Based on the discussion, the Prime Minister said,

"To accelerate the reconstruction from the Great East Japan Earthquake, the necessary budget must be secured once again in the FY2014 budget. Furthermore, in the face of the series of damages caused by heavy rains and typhoons of an unprecedented scale, efforts need to be accelerated to make Japan a resilient nation.  
With regard to social infrastructure development, it has long been pointed out that waste must be eliminated and priority should be given to projects that are effective as investments. Instead of building facilities for building facilities or construction work for construction work, social infrastructure development must be boldly carried out based on new ideas and schemes to be able to effectively and efficiently provide the services that people want.
In particular, taking into account the declining population and the severe financial situation, the budget for public works projects also requires that we further emphasize the priority and efficiency of projects.
Therefore, I would like to ask that robust efforts are made towards the promotion of social infrastructure management, the bold use of public-private partnerships (PPP) and private finance initiatives (PFI), strengthened partnerships between relevant ministries for the development of compact cities and towns in local communities, and more.
With regard to national resilience, national resilience policy guidelines will be established by taking into consideration the proposals of the private sector members of the Council. Based on the guidelines, the order of priority, objectives, outcomes, and the division of roles will be made clear in order to fully fulfill our accountability to the people.
I would like to ask the Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, the Minister in charge of Building National Resilience, the Minister for Internal Affairs and Communications, and the Minister of Finance to further deepen the discussion based on today's discussion. I ask the Senior Vice Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology to relay today's discussion to Minister Shimomura."