ATTRACTION OF ZONES
Six SEZs were announced in May 2014, and it was said that 68 projects would eventually be approved in the Tokyo and Kansai areas, Okinawa Prefecture, Niigata City, Fukuoka City, and Yabu City in Hyogo Prefecture.
Niigata City has 14 projects, mainly centered on agriculture, that include attempts to allow companies to control farmland — which will allow supermarkets, for example, to offer advice to farmers on what to grow.
To date, this has been the prerogative of the Central Union of Agricultural Cooperatives, or JA-Zenchu, a powerful body that has dominated farm practices in Japan. The city is also looking for ways to combine scattered farming plots to allow planting and harvesting to be more mechanized.
Like Niigata, Yabu City aims to revitalize its farmland. In addition to the company-based initiatives, Yabu is also attempting to revitalize abandoned farmland and bring it back into production.
Necessary legal amendments to SEZ laws were passed in July, and will be enforced from September, opening the way for the approval of specific business plans.
It is difficult to put a dollar figure on how far the commercialization of iPS would boost economic activity, but, in the first instance, by being able to trade iPS blood between organizations, instead of produce it on site, it is expected that research activities, such as those involving drug discovery, will accelerate, possibly feeding into greater and more rapid commercial application.