More than one in four major companies have no plans to make political party donations this year, a Kyodo News survey has reported.

The April survey, which suggests the business community has little interest in the House of Councilors election in July, shows that 27 percent of 159 companies will make no political donations, an increase of 19 percent from last summer's survey of 100 companies.

Although the Japan Business Federation (Nippon Keidanren) is encouraging its member companies to make contributions to the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, many businesses are reluctant to donate at a time when stockholders and consumers continue to scrutinize such funding, critics said.

Some companies are also unwilling to make donations because they are struggling in a difficult business environment, they said.

Only 1.3 percent of the companies said they plan to make first-time political donations, while no firms said they plan to raise their donation amounts or increase the number of parties they contribute to.

Meanwhile, 13.2 percent said they will wait and see before making a decision.

Among companies that made donations in 2003, 25.8 percent contributed to the LDP, compared with 2.5 percent that contributed to the Democratic Party of Japan, the main opposition force.

Of those planning to make donations in 2004, 12.6 percent said they will give money to the LDP and 1.9 percent said they will donate to the DPJ.

In January, Nippon Keidanren released an evaluation report on the policies of the two parties and gave high marks to the LDP.

The business lobby's report essentially recommended that its member companies make donations to the LDP.

Its predecessor, the Japan Federation of Economic Organizations (Keidanren), stopped organizing political donations in 1993 amid a spate of corruption scandals.

But Nippon Keidanren decided to resume organizing donations in a bid to recover its political influence, which weakened during the decade of no contributions.