• 
• 

[Provisional Translation]

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe attended the Government-hosted National Governors’ Conference at the Prime Minister’s Office.

The Prime Minister said in his address,

“Thank you for coming here today despite your busy schedules. I am extremely pleased to have this opportunity to directly hear the opinions of the Governors of each prefecture. All of you are working hard day and night to promote local governments.

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.

In Kochi Prefecture in September, for the first time since statistics started to be collected in 1963, the ratio of job offers to job seekers reached 1.0. Congratulations. I expect that the desire to employ more personnel will increase even further at companies across the country.
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 entering a new stage of the initiatives for regional vitalization. Aiming for regional vitalization means increasing productivity, as well as realizing stable employment and wages in the regions.

In order to achieve that, we have established a new “Regional Jobs Vitalization Council ” under the Council on Overcoming Population Decline and Vitalizing Local Economy in Japan. We will compile specific issues and directions for this council, fully mobilize and work toward the realization of policies related to such matters as budgets, tax systems, and the easing of regulations, and realize visible regional vitalization.

In addition, we will further accelerate decentralization reform.

This fiscal year, we received views directly from local communities on various issues affecting the regions. The Abe Cabinet will continue to thoroughly listen to the opinions of people in the regions and strongly and steadily execute reforms, 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.

I ask for your further understanding and cooperation as the Government continues its efforts to work as one to execute measures while carefully furthering discussion with Governors, including through this meeting today.”