The Japan Federation of Economic Organizations (Keidanren) called on the government Tuesday to spend 5.44 trillion yen over five years on information technology and to increase the number of Internet users in Japan to 70 million by 2003.
The nation's most powerful business group said 2.25 trillion yen should be spent to computerize all government documents and procedures, 2.2 trillion yen to improve computer literacy among teachers and students, and 990 billion yen to support important high-tech research and development projects.
The set of requests was submitted the same day to the government, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and other related parties, Keidanren officials said.
The powerful lobby also recommended the government set up an independent secretariat under the prime minister to handle budgets for information technology projects, saying there is little policy coordination now on IT budgets and that a number of ministries submit separate requests.
Keidanren asked that some of its proposals be included in a supplementary budget expected to be compiled this fall, including 540 billion yen to give every teacher a personal computer and 1.3 trillion yen to connect all school rooms to the Internet.