According to the Wall Street Journal:
"The measures likely to be debated in the parliamentary session running from Tuesday until early December are those aimed at strengthening Japanese companies' competitiveness and setting up special economic zones.
Japan clocked 3.8% growth in the April-June quarter, the fastest among industrialized countries, and in a bid to offset the impact of the planned rise in the 5% sales tax to 8% from next April, Mr. Abe has told the government to compile a ¥5 trillion stimulus package. But without more structural reform measures, sustained growth is unlikely, economists say.
One target in Mr. Abe's commitment to sharpen competitiveness is to increase annual private-sector capital investment to ¥70 trillion over the next three years through various tax breaks. That's a 10% increase from the year ended this March, and equivalent to the levels before the 2008 global financial crisis.
The government also wants to promote businesses to shift their resources to "sunrise" industries through restructuring and aggressive mergers and acquisitions. Mr. Abe has set renewable energy and cutting-edge medical services as some of the new frontier industries that should benefit from further investment.
As part of facilitating the shift to sunrise industries, Mr. Abe also wants to make it easier to move workers among industries, a departure from the long tradition of businesses holding on to the workforce, as symbolized by lifetime employment.
Another problem for the world's third-largest economy is the low ratio of startups. Only 4.5% of Japanese businesses are startups, but the government hopes to push this proportion up to 10% by 2017, the same level as the U.S. and the U.K".
Promoting investment in venture capitals and launching a government service to vet the legal status of their new business plans before they actually embark on them are being considered as steps to help achieve the 10% goal".
"Mr. Abe also aims to attract foreign direct investment to Japan, seeking to push it up to ¥35 trillion by 2020 from ¥17.8 trillion in 2012. His main vehicle for achieving the goal will be the special economic zones, where existing regulations and standards will be eased to promote investment".
