Further, the ratio of overseas transshipment $ ^{Note 1} $ remains on the rise, though recently at a slower pace of growth than before. With the commissioning of New Pusan Port and other ports into service, the status of international marine container distribution surrounding Japan has toughened further, urging a drastic imminent solution to bolster international competitiveness for Japan’s ports and harbors.

In the circumstances, a decision came in August 2010 to maintain and broaden the key international sea routes that link Japan to North America, Europe and elsewhere, and Hanshin Port and Keihin Port were selected as strategic international container ports. An integrated hardware and software package of measures, involving the development of container terminals and other infrastructures, concentration of freight and privatization of port management, has been put into action at these ports to upgrade their functionalities.

Based on the Port and Harbor Act amended in 2011, one special port operating company was specified for Hanshin Port in October 2012 and for Yokohama Port in December of the same year, respectively. At other strategic international ports and international core ports as well, port operating companies will be appointed in the future to help streamline the flow of port administration.

## ② Forming a resource and energy efficient network of maritime transportation (Enhancement to the functionalities of strategic international bulk ports)

In a globally tight supply and demand climate for resources, energies and so on, importing these materials with stability and at low cost has become an pressing issue for Japan, because the nation depends on imports for virtually all of her requirements for these materials.

While bulk freight liners continue to grow in size in the world and the development of port and harbor facilities to accept these cargo liners is in progress in the neighboring nations, a greater proportion of Japan’s port and harbor facilities fail to catch up with globally larger cargo liner sizes. Further, while Japan holds large demand for resources, energies and so on as a nation, the domestic demand is scattered into smaller units of imports among individual operators, so that ships made larger in size would be hardly advantageous to them.

For this reason, the allocation of large-vessel-ready port and harbor facilities as core sits and inter-business collaboration will be accelerated to shape an efficient national network of marine transportation focusing on strategic international bulk ports, thereby realizing stable, less costly imports to build up Japan’s industrial competitiveness, create employment and checking the outflow of income.

## ③ Building functionally core ports on the Japan Sea

Among the ports and harbors located on the Japan Sea that geographically close to the countries across the sea following a rapid pace of economic growth, core ports were selected in November 2011 in an effort to assimilate economic leaps in the countries on the opposite shore into Japan’s growth through the selection of relevant functionalities and concentration of measures and also through linkage between the ports and to build a disaster-proof logistics network.

The Review Committee on the Formation of Core Ports on the Japan Sea will meet continuously from now on to follow up the progress of the plans, etc. submitted by the port administrators.

## ④ Upgrading port and harbor procedures

The Ministry is working to improve the convenience of fulfilling the port and harbor procedures upon entry into and departure from ports, in time for the upcoming renewal of the single-window system.

## ⑦ Enhanced functionalities of international ports and harbors

To address increasingly sophisticated and diversified needs for East Asian logistics, which is not much different from domestic logistics in both terms of timing and distance and build a low-cost logistics system, the Ministry pushes ahead with functional enhancements to unit loading terminals $ ^{Note 2} $ and with the development of facilities that simply the flow of cargo transshipment. To catch up with rising volumes of container and bulk freights, the Ministry also promotes the