Dear ANDEV Supporters
While the Federal Government sleeps and doesn’t really care about the future of Australia we have another country Japan move to create Special Economic Zones! See the below article that appeared in The Australian today. The Japanese Government minister in charge of this issue Yoshitaka Shindo is quoted as saying, ” This is the flagship project of Abe cabinet’s growth strategy.” The aim is to make Japan the world’s easiest place to run a business, through bold regulatory reforms and tax breaks.
Yesterday we saw New York State moving to create SEZ’s!
ANDEV has been calling for SEZ’s since its inception and has the Federal Government listened – NO! Worse it has arrogantly dismissed SEZ’s and ANDEV. We have to wait for the Coalition Government to be elected for any hope Australia can make up the ground it has lost in no longer being competitive and creative in developing Australia’s capacity for improved economic growth and in particular developing the  under developed resources of our North.
Article from The Australian

Abenomics growth strategy targets special economic zones

AS it seeks to fulfil its promise to overhaul a long-stagnant economy, Japan’s government plans to create special economic zones around the country under a broader growth strategy to be announced later this week.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is expected to present an overview of the new zones in a speech on the so-called third arrow of his revitalisation plan known as Abenomics today. The overall program is expected to be approved by the cabinet on June 14.
The zones are among a number of measures meant to answer long-standing complaints among foreign and domestic businesses. Steps under consideration for the zones include more international flights from Tokyo’s Haneda airport, better medical services for expatriate executives and more flexible employment systems for researchers and workers in cutting-edge industries.
Although the details of the zones have yet to be mapped out, Yoshitaka Shindo, the government minister in charge of the issue, said the objective was to make Japan the world’s easiest place to run a business through bold regulatory reforms and tax breaks.
‘‘This is the flagship project of the Abe cabinet’s growth strategy,’’ Mr Shindo said in an interview.
Officials say a full-fledged discussion of the proposals will have to wait until after important elections for the upper house of parliament planned for late next month. But they said they hoped the administration would make quick progress on at least one or two steps.
‘‘The first test for the cabinet is whether it will be able to present a realistic road map for at least one of these proposals before the election,’’ said Eiji Hara, a policy consultant and a member of the government’s working group for the special economic zones.
Many outside observers say that Mr Abe’s third-arrow growth strategy is in many ways the most important, following earlier measures — or arrows — to greatly boost monetary stimulus and raise government spending.
The plan comes during a time of high anxiety for markets. They have been unabashed supporters of the Prime Minister’s policies so far, sending shares sharply higher and bringing down the value of the yen, which had been a major drag on big exporters.
After climbing more than 80 per cent from the time Mr Abe started to outline his policy proposals — before he even won a landslide election victory in December — Japanese shares have experienced a nasty shock over the past two weeks. That has taken the Nikkei Stock Average down more than 17 per cent from its recent peak of 15,942 on May 23. As stocks fell, the yen strengthened by 3 per cent.
Analysts say the initial measures for the Abenomics zones are a good step, but more is essential if the zones are to help jump-start the economy. While the economy grew at a healthy 3.5 per cent annual rate in the first quarter, the figures showed that corporate investment declined for the fifth straight trimester. Economists say the weak capex numbers show that companies are still sceptical about Abenomics.
At the top of Japan’s must-do list are corporate tax cuts. Japan’s top corporate tax rate is 35.64 per cent, excluding a temporary surcharge for earthquake reconstruction, the second-highest among leading industrialised nations after the US.
The Tokyo metropolitan government offers a special corporate tax rate of 26.9 per cent for foreign companies coming into their own special economic zone called the Tokyo Business Special Zone for Asian Headquarters. But critics say the rules to qualify are too complicated and note that the figure is still much higher than Singapore’s 17.0 per cent and Hong Kong’s 16.5 per cent.