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Japan's 'postal bill vote delayed'
 Koizumi says postal privatization is a key part of his reform agenda. YOUR E-MAIL ALERTS(CNN) -- A vote on Japan's controversial postal privatization bills has been delayed until at least Monday, according to Japanese media reports on Thursday. The bills, designed to break up the state-owned Japan Post and spin off its savings and insurance operations into two massive financial institutions, are a pivotal part of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's reform agenda. They were originally expected to come up for a vote on Friday. Koizumi has threatened to dissolve Japan's lower house and call a general election if the legislation is defeated. But according to a report Thursday by Kyodo News and another on the Nikkei Web site, leaders of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) have decided to postpone a vote on the bills at least until Monday, because party members are nervous about the outcome. The Nikkei report says LDP leaders hope that delaying the vote will buy them enough time to sway privatization opponents from voting against the legislative package. Japan's biggest opposition party, the Democratic Party of Japan, had already warned that it would seek to block passage of the bills if the ruling coalition pushed for a vote on Friday. Only 18 LDP dissenters are needed to defeat the legislation. One opposition party claims that 20 LDP legislators are prepared to vote against the package. Japan Post has a workforce of 270,000 people in 24,700 post offices and its savings arm holds deposits of more than $2 trillion. Under the bills, Japan Post will be split into four business units by April 2007. These will take over its mail delivery, savings, life insurance and post office network. The two financial spinoffs, covering savings and insurance, will then be fully privatized within 10 years. Koizumi has said he wants these two spinoffs to to be attractive enough for overseas investors to want to buy stakes in them. Last month, Heizo Takenaka, the minister in charge of postal privatization, said the four companies to be created would pay a total of 490 billion yen (about $4.4 billion) in taxes in fiscal 2007. Koizumi told reporters on Wednesday he became prime minister by promising to change the party. "I want others to understand that I'm determined to pursue reform by breaking the status quo," he said, according to the Nikkei. In an editorial comment last week, the pro-business Nihon Keizai financial daily said that killing the postal bills would mean that the nation's postal savings and insurance machinery would continue to drain off "a huge amount of private funds" and funnel them into government bonds that were used to finance budget deficits and public works projects. 
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