[Provisional Translation]

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe attended a meeting with six regional organizations at the Prime Minister's Office.

The Prime Minister said in his opening address,

“I would like to express my sincere gratitude to everyone from the six regional organizations for gathering here despite your busy schedules. I am extremely pleased to have this opportunity to meet with all of you, who are working so hard day and night for the development of municipalities while shouldering heavy responsibilities as the representatives of each organization.

We are on the verge of exiting deflation through the ‘three arrows’ of Abenomics. The profits of Japanese companies are higher than they have ever been, and tax revenues are increasing for municipalities across the country. More than anything else, the improvement in employment is eye opening, with the ratio of job offers to job seekers climbing across the country, even reaching record highs in seven regional prefectures. The Abe Cabinet aims to further accelerate these positive trends and create a society in which all one hundred million-plus citizens are each dynamically engaged so that we can overcome the serious structural issue of an aging society and declining birthrate faced by both the national and regional governments.

Yesterday, we compiled the first round of urgent policies to achieve that. Today, I have just issued instructions for the formulation of the FY2015 supplementary budget based on those policies. Combined with the budget for the next fiscal year, we will respond thoroughly to this issue.

We are approaching a crucial stage for regional vitalization. We will create new forms of subsidies in the FY2016 budget and strongly support the implementation of the regional versions of the comprehensive strategy formulated by regional governments. In doing so, we will provide positive support for the advanced initiatives of municipalities aimed at accelerating regional vitalization, as well as promoting visible regional vitalization throughout the country.

Additionally, we must strongly advance decentralization reform even further. This year we have resolved many regional issues, such as the long-standing unresolved issue of transferring the authority to approve diversions of agricultural land to local public bodies. We will continue to strongly and steadily promote reform, toward the realization of all of the proposals we have received on more specific regional issues through the solicitation of proposals this fiscal year, including the state of the transfer of authority over Hello Work, the Government’s employment service center, to the regions, a long-standing and major issue.

The Abe Cabinet will continue to carefully listen to the opinions of people in the regions and execute reforms for the regions based on regional ideas. I hope to again receive your frank opinions during this meeting today. Thank you.”