A three-year plan was launched March 31 that targets 15 industrial sectors for deregulation, including domestic airline operations, electric power retailing and digital broadcasting, government officials said.

The plan, approved at the day's Cabinet meeting, will be implemented April 1, the first day of fiscal 1998. The government hopes the new plan, along with the 16 trillion yen worth of economy-boosting measures unveiled last week by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, will help the ailing economy recover.

Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto said March 31 that the government must proceed in deregulating domestic industry even though the process may at first have a negative impact on the economy. "We need to proceed with deregulation in order to comply with the people's demands, even though we know the process may be painful for the time being," Hashimoto told a meeting of the government's administrative reform task force.

The plan says that in principle, all economic regulations should be removed. To this end, it calls for a change from controlling the private sector's activities before they begin checking them after they are carried out.

In the airline industry, the government in fiscal 1999 will remove a rule restricting the number of carriers operating on a single route. Under the new plan, supply and demand of each route will no longer be taken into account, allowing new carriers to freely compete with rivals.

The government will also study ending the monopoly on the retail of electric power by allowing companies that hold power generating facilities to freely sell it. For the power industry, the Electricity Utility Industry Council will make a conclusion in May on liberalizing retail sales of electricity and other measures designed to increase competition in order to help reduce Japan's electricity charges, which are about 20 percent higher than those of other major industrialized countries.