September 20, 2023
Japan Fair Trade Commission
Today, I would like to talk about the request for relevant trade associations regarding their legal compliance status, which is jointly made by the JFTC, the Small and Medium Enterprise Agency (hereinafter referred to as "SME Agency"), and ministries overseeing specific industries (hereinafter referred to as “relevant ministries”). It will encourage relevant trade associations to carry out self-inspections by their association members.
In "Promotion of the "2023 Action Plan to Promote Fair Transactions involving Small and Medium-sized Enterprises"" you can find "The Grasp of the Strengthening of Efforts for Fair Transactions in Industries with Many Violations of the Antimonopoly Act", which is stated as third pillar of the "Strengthening the Enforcement of the Subcontract Act". Today’s announcement means the launch of this initiative.
As we mentioned in the press release as of today, the JFTC and the SME Agency jointly with relevant ministries, requested relevant trade associations to conduct self-inspections on the status of legal compliance by their association members where many violations of the Antimonopoly Act had been found, following the package of measures for facilitation of passing on rising costs. The original results were announced on December 14, 2022.
In the results of the self-inspections, we also stated the strengthening of the future efforts by the relevant trade associations and the ministries overseeing specific industries for fair transactions. This year, we decided to grasp and follow up on the strengthening of these efforts.
Based on the results of our emergency investigation, the number of industries subject to follow-up this year is 27, up from 19 of last year. From today, the JFTC, the SME Agency and relevant ministries will jointly request trade associations in 27 industries to conduct self-inspections by their association members. We ask for cooperation by those associations and association members.
We plan to compile the inspection results by the end of 2023 and publish them as the results of follow-up after examining and evaluating them based on the information grasped by the JFTC and the SME Agency. We hope that this follow-up will lead to encouraging enterprises and trade associations to repeatedly inspect and improve their voluntary initiatives.
（Tentative translation）
