The Japanese government will start giving online shopping points to people who choose to have packages delivered outside their front doors to ease the burden on delivery staff, according to a policy package compiled in early October.
The step is part of efforts to cope with the impact of tougher overtime regulations for truck drivers next year. It aims to halve the percentage of items redelivered when people are not at home from the current 12 percent to 6 percent in fiscal 2024 starting next April.
"Logistics is an important social infrastructure which supports people's lives and the economy," Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said on Oct. 6 at a meeting of related ministers to compile measures to deal with an expected decline in truck transport capacity.
To promote a shift to other means of transportation, the government will also aim to double the amount of items transported by ship and rail in the next 10 years from 50 million tons and 18 million tons in fiscal 2020, respectively.
"We will include steps which will have immediate impact in our stimulus measures and swiftly implement them," Kishida said, referring to the government's economic package to be compiled by the end of this month.
The government intends to include the plan in a draft supplementary budget to fund the economic package, government officials said.
In the project, the government plans to give points to people who choose to receive packages outside the front door, at convenience stores, or with flexible delivery dates when they place orders online.
The government is working to decide the amount of points to be offered and when to start the measure.
It is making arrangements to include subsidies for online shopping operators to modify systems to grant points and also funds to cover a portion of the points granted in the extra budget, with the hope that operators continue the measure voluntarily after the project ends.
The move comes as Japan faces the so-called "2024 problem," meaning the country's transport delivery capacity is expected to drop when the new regulations from April limits truck drivers' overtime to 960 hours a year.
Amid the chronic shortage of truck drivers due to aging and poor wages, the government estimates the nation's logistics capacity will decrease by 34 percent in fiscal 2030 from fiscal 2019.
