The Democratic Party of Japan on Wednesday revealed its countermeasures to the government-sponsored legislation on pension reform.
The DPJ's plan calls for the integration in fiscal 2009 of the corporate employee pension scheme, the national pension covering the self-employed and unemployed, and the mutual-aid pension for public servants, as well as the introduction of a new 3 percent consumption tax whose revenue would be exclusively used to fund basic pension payouts. The levy would be on top of the current 5 percent tax.
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi recently expressed support for the future integration of the pension programs, a move that threw the Diet into turmoil because the government has already introduced to the Diet a pension reform bill based on the existing programs.