MLIT to direct its continued efforts at securing and fostering industry leaders, including young workers, to enable the construction industry to continue playing its role as a community supporter in the background of falling birthrates with aging populations.

To this end, the MLIT is working to refurbish the environment that makes construction builder confident about their future prospects, including a continued, stable supply of public works funding, as well as to promote the creation of an attractive working environment by improving the labor conditions for craftspersons drastically, such as maintaining appropriate wage levels and encouraging their subscription to social insurance and other security programs. The MLIT is also keen to enhance and reinforce education and training in the industry, as by improving the functionalities of Fuji Education Training Center to facilitate a smooth transfer of skills from generation to generation, as well as review qualifications for taking technical certification tests to help get excellent young workers to work in the early periods of their career. Moreover, the MLIT contemplates to formulate a public-private action plan to double the number of female technicians and craftsmen in five years in order to open up wider fields of activity for female workers in the construction industry.

Moreover, the MLIT will be working to help boost productivity in the construction industry, as by automating field operations and heavily tiered subconstructing structures, as it braces for dimishing workforces in the future.

United public-private approaches will be driven to encourage more people to join in the construction industry and let them concentrate on their jobs with pride while acquiring expertise and skills.

Furthermore, the utilization of foreign human resources ready for work will be pursued as an emergency and temporary response (scheduled for expiry in FY2020) to possible transient booms in the construction demand spurred by the implementation of future restoration projects and hosting of the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games while adhering to the key principle of seeking human resources from within Japan.

## (3) Establishing a framework of fair competition

As the construction industry takes charge of the jobs of keeping local communities safe and secure, as through the development, maintenance, management, etc. of local infrastructures, it needs to establish a framework of fair competition among contractors, including thorough legal compliance, to enable those of them who are superior in their technical strength, construction capability and management power to keep up with their growth. To this end, the Ministry has been working to normalize the practice of deals between prime contractors and subcontractors in the construction business by conducting subcontracting transaction status surveys, on-the-spot surveys, etc., opening a desk for consultation services on troubles, complaints and other problems encountered in concluding construction work contracts as “Construction Business Transaction Normalization Center” and collaborating with prefectural and municipal governments during the Construction Business Normalization Promotion Month (November).

## (4) Measures aimed at supporting construction companies

### a. Regional construction business management-incentive finance program

The regional construction business management-incentive finance program allows prime contractors to acquire loans from a cooperative association or a certain private entity on security of the public works contract price credit obligations, according to the completed amount of works. Its purpose is to smooth their cash flow and ease their burden of interest payment.

Effective since November 2008, this program will be carried forward through FY2015.