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On July 8, members of the DPJ Consultative Council on Okinawa, which is chaired by Secretary General Katsuya Okada, submitted a proposal regarding the establishment of lump-sum subsidies for the promotion of Okinawa (provisional translation) to Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano, who also serves at the Minister of State for Okinawa and Northern Territories Affairs.
Since the reversion of Okinawa, four 10-year Okinawa Promotion Plans have been formulated by central government, with the latest due to expire at the end of the current fiscal year. Consultative Council members said that in view of this, they had exchanged opinions with Okinawa governor Hirokazu Nakaima and other local government representatives, as well as with local people, and undertaken inspection visits in Okinawa. They explained that the Consultative Council had considered and drafted a promotion plan which took into account both the central role played by the prefecture and the responsibility taken by the government with relation to the promotion of Okinawa, as well as the promotion plan produced by the prefecture which emphasized the opinions of Okinawa residents.
The proposal for establishing lump sum subsidies contained five items, including proposals for abolishing tied subsidies and instead providing lump-sum subsidies with a high degree of flexibility, in principle transferring control of projects now directly under the authority of central government to prefectural control, gradually reducing the size of the Okinawa Central Bureau, and transferring the necessary personnel to prefectural government, as well as considering the ultimate abolition of the Bureau.
In response, Edano said, “The government is making every effort to proceed with reforms as much as we possibly can.”
Following the meeting, Okada said, “Establishing a system of lump-sum subsidies is a major pillar of local sovereignty reform. I would like the DPJ, the DPJ prefectural headquarters in Okinawa and the Okinawa prefectural government to work together to realise the establishment of lump-sum Okinawa promotion subsidies.”
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