Japan Enacts Bill to Promote Relay Cargo Operations

Tokyo, May 13 (Jiji Press)–The Diet, Japan’s parliament, enacted a bill Wednesday to promote work-style reforms for truck drivers by encouraging the use of systems that allow multiple logistics firms to relay cargo. The bill to revise the logistics streamlining law was approved in a plenary meeting of the House of Councillors, the upper chamber of the Diet, following its passage in the House of Representatives, the lower chamber, last month. The revised law is designed to allow truck drivers to limit their work to day trips while helping logistics firms to secure more drivers. The amended law establishes a system in which the government certifies plans by multiple companies to adopt relay cargo operations. Certified operators will be eligible for support for necessary expenses during the first year. It also offers tax incentives, including reductions in property taxes for relay facilities such as warehouses. Relay facilities are also intended to improve efficiency in logistics services by enabling the transfer of goods from one truck to another and allowing trucks to drive back with cargo for the return trip. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]