Mission

Fujio MITARAI Chairman, Nippon Keidanren

Allow me to take this opportunity to wish you and yours a Happy New Year and to share Nippon Keidanren's vision for 2009.

As we enter the New Year, the international economic environment confronts an unprecedented crisis. Sparked by the US sub-prime mortgage problems that surfaced in the summer of last year, this financial crisis has plunged capital markets throughout the world into chaos. With the global economy as a whole, including the economies of emerging powers and resource-supplying countries, pulled increasingly toward a recession as raw fuel prices and exchange rates fluctuate wildly, the Japanese economy is caught in extremely difficult circumstances.

Recent trends also show that the problems that one country faces can no longer be contained within its borders, as economic globalization accelerates and the international community becomes ever more closely tied. While the governments of countries around the world are working together to forge a speedy response to this immediate financial crisis, we face countless other issues, such as the environment and poverty, which also require coordinated solutions on a global scale. Calls for the strong leadership and decisive reforms needed at the global level to address these issues have intensified, a trend observable in the outcome of the US presidential election this past autumn and the expectations it generated.

In order to weather these adverse conditions, Japan's highest priority must be a national approach to finding solutions for these difficult problems that focus foremost on strengthening capacity for economic growth, reforms for sounder public finance, establishing a sustainable social security system, and revitalizing local economies. In times such as these, significant upheavals are liable to appear with little or no warning, which makes the way ahead difficult to envision. To prepare ourselves, we must lose no time in marking out a clear path to a future full of hope -- a path that fully utilizes the advanced technologies and expertise of our country's workforce, advantages backed by Japan's strong track record and wealth of past experience. Our mission is to fulfill our responsibilities to future generations by resolutely carrying out the substantial reforms required to extricate ourselves from this worldwide crisis. If we choose to cling to the status quo and ignore the latest challenges with which we are presented, we will simply be handing the same problems we face today off to future generations and helping to intensify, not remedy, the current crisis.

The right path for each of us will become clear if we focus on pursuing the national interest and what is best for the Japanese people. As we move forward into 2009, Nippon Keidanren will work with all segments of society to resolve the issues that we all currently face, while continuing to actively and eagerly solicit the opinions of all sectors regarding our vision and concepts.