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Enron Mail |
Some tangible progress is being made.
---------------------- Forwarded by Nicholas O'Day/AP/Enron on 05/31/2001 10:21 AM --------------------------- Mika Watanabe 05/30/2001 10:38 AM To: Nicholas O'Day/AP/Enron@Enron, Mark Crowther/AP/Enron@Enron, Llewelyn Hughes/AP/Enron@Enron, Tom Fitzgibbon/AP/Enron@Enron, Michael Grimes/AP/Enron@Enron, Takashi Kimura/AP/Enron@Enron cc: Joseph P Hirl/AP/ENRON@ENRON Subject: JFTC To Boost Staff As Probe Requests Rise Wednesday, May 30, 2001 FTC To Boost Staff By 40% As Probe Requests Rise TOKYO (Nikkei)--The Fair Trade Commission will increase its staff by 40% from the current 570 to 800 in five years under its medium-term plan, The Nihon Keizai Shimbun learned Tuesday. In particular, the FTC aims to beef up its inspection functions to prevent illegal activities, such as price cartels and obstruction of entry into the information and data communications market. The upgraded inspection ability will also speed up the screening of mega-mergers for approval, thus helping accelerate ongoing industrial realignment in Japan. Most of the planned increases will come in Tokyo, where the number of inspection division personnel investigating cases such as cartels will be doubled from the current 200. With deregulation, the number of filings from businesses requesting FTC probes has increased sharply. In fiscal 2000, such filings totaled 2,878, up 33.7% from a year earlier. But in many cases, personnel shortages prevented the FTC from making thorough investigations or it took too long to complete them. The plan will also enhance the FTC's ability to protect consumers. With the expansion of online shopping, the number of products with misleading labels has increased sharply. The FTC will increase the number of personnel to oversee and prevent such malpractice. The FTC will seek to have the proposals in the plan incorporated into a set of guidelines to be compiled in late June by the Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy headed by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. q
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