Economy

Liberal Democratic Party Body Proposes Active Use of JBIC for Corporate Overseas Expansion

Yomiuri Shimbun file photo
The Liberal Democratic Party’s headquarters in Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo.

The Yomiuri Shimbun

10:00 JST, December 14, 2025

The Liberal Democratic Party’s Headquarters for the Promotion of Economic Security, in a draft proposal on economic security presented at a party meeting on Thursday morning, called for the creation of a system to use the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) to fund overseas expansion by Japanese companies.

The document will be presented to the government soon.

The proposal seeks to secure supply chains for materials essential to the Japanese economy.

It points out that projects conducted in emerging and developing countries for purposes such as securing sea lanes often “involve risks and are not always highly profitable, making them difficult to fund through private financing alone.”

It says that the government should use the JBIC to “implement support measures, with the expectation that it will assume part of the risk.”

The proposal also stresses the importance of data security to prevent the leakage of corporate information. It urges the government to speed up discussions to establish protective measures to prevent data leaks from data centers and cloud services.

Discussions on enhancing the functionality of the inbound direct investment screening system have also been held by the headquarters.

Under the system, foreign investments in Japanese companies are screened in an effort to prevent the outflow of technologies critical to economic security. Within the LDP and elsewhere, discussions are underway to strengthen the screening framework, envisioning a Japanese version of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS).

After a meeting held at party headquarters on Dec. 4, Yasutaka Nakasone, the body’s secretary general, said, “The important thing is to enhance its functionality and improve the accuracy of investment screening.”

Attending lawmakers raised the importance of information gathering and the need to overhaul existing interministerial meetings.