FACTBOX-Japan opposition's election campaign platform

Published: 30 Aug 2009 17:10:58 PST

TOKYO, Aug 31 - Japan's opposition Democratic Party swept to a historic victory in an election on Sunday, ending more than half a century of almost unbroken rule by the Liberal Democratic Party.

Below is an outline of major economic policies in the Democrats' platform announced before the election.

ECONOMIC GROWTH STRATEGY

-- Pay out 26,000 yen per month to families per child in full from April 2011.

-- Make public high schools free of charge.

-- Introduce income support for farmers in full from April 2011.

-- Abolish a decades-old surcharge of about 25 yen per litre on gasoline and other car-related taxes to achieve 2.5 trillion yen ($26 billion) in tax cuts.

-- Gradually scrap highway tolls.

-- Increase household disposable income by these means, expand consumption and thus change the Japanese economy to one in which growth is led by domestic demand; realise stable economic growth.

-- Support IT, biotechnology, environment related businesses as growth sectors, along with agriculture.

IMPLEMENT POLICIES AS FUNDS FOUND

-- Cut wasteful spending by such means as halting public works projects and reducing government personnel costs.

-- Gradually implement policies at the cost of 7.1 trillion yen in the first year starting from next April, rising to 16.8 trillion yen in the fourth year.

EMPLOYMENT AND ECONOMY

-- Bring down the corporate tax rate for small- and mid-sized firms to 11 percent from the current 18 percent.

-- Establish a nationwide minimum wage of 800 yen and aim at increasing that to 1,000 yen per hour.

-- Ban in general the dispatch of temp workers to manufacturers and expand permanent employment.

CLIMATE CHANGE

-- Cut greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 and by more than 60 percent by 2050. (For related story, click)

-- Create a domestic emissions trading market, with compulsory volume caps on emitters and consider introducing a climate tax.

-- Introduce a "feed-in" tariff for any type of renewable energy supply, under which power companies pay an above-market rate for every unit of such types of power, and boost renewable energy sources to about 10 percent of primary energy supply by 2020.

FREE TRADE DEALS

-- Promote negotiations on a free trade deal without hurting stable food supply and domestic agriculture.

-- Aim at free trade agreements with various Asia-Pacific countries and actively promote negotiations without hurting stable food supply and domestic agriculture.

PENSIONS, MEDICAL CARE

-- Focus on recovering missing pension records for the first two years starting next April.

-- Standardise the pension system with a minimum pension allowance of 70,000 yen per month.

-- Reject a pledge to cut annual increases in welfare spending by 220 billion yen, which the government also abandoned last month.