日本郵政事業的民營化‧自由化與普及服務

Privatization, Liberalization, and Universal Service of Postal Service in Japan

民營化與自由化雖始於70年代末期，但直到90年代末期，以歐盟為首的世界各國才開始著手進行郵政事業的改革，在歐盟指令的壓力下，會員國均需在一定時程內，逐步階段性地縮小獨占範圍，同時保障普及服務，以達自由化的目標。而亞洲的日本雖非歐盟成員，卻也在2003年4月將原本為行政機關的郵政事業改制為公社，進而於2007年10月移轉民營（仍由政府全部持股），最後將於2017年10月達成完全民營化的目標。研究結果發現，日本郵政改革有兩大特徵：一是保守的階段性民營化，先公社化，再藉由經營權移轉和事業的水平分離，階段性完成民營化；二是形式的自由化，表面上開放郵務市場，但一般信件領域卻因採許可制，設有嚴格的加入條件，而限制民間業者進入市場，形成實質獨占。此外，日本雖選擇使用公共性內部化方式來達到保障郵務普及服務之目的，但未來郵務市場若真正自由化，恐會影響新事業體企業性和競爭力的發揮，故有重新檢討之必要。借鏡日本經驗，未來我國郵政事業改革可以朝郵儲壽三事業分離，郵務暫時維持國營，儲匯和簡易保險民營方向進行，同時還應思考如何建構公平競爭環境與郵政普及服務制度。

Although the global wave of privatization has begun in the late 70’s, it is not until the late 90’s that countries worldwide started their postal service reform, with the European Union being the world’s pioneer. Under the supervision of the EU, EU members were obliged to gradually reduce the scope of state-run postal service scope in order to achieve privatization while ensuring sound provision of universal postal service. Although Japan is not one of the EU members, postal reform was launched in April of 2003, and her first step was to transform the Postal Services Agency (PSA) into a public corporation. On October 1, 2007, the public corporation was privatized (in a broad sense) with the Japanese government being the sole shareholder, and it is planned to be fully privatized by 2017. Studies show that the postal reformation in Japan has 2 significant features. First, privatization was done through conservative approaches in a step-by-step fashion. Initially, the PSA was transformed into a public corporation, then in order to split up the management horizontally, it was divided into different companies. Second, market liberalization was only realized in a nominal sense. Although the postal service market was opened to all, there were significant barriers to entry for interested parties from the private sector. As a result, the public corporation maintained its monopoly within the postal service market. Moreover, Japan has chosen to internalized publicness in order to guarantee the provision of universal postal service, but if the postal service market is fully opened, the competitiveness and entrepreneurship of the new privatized company will be greatly influenced; therefore, there is a need to reflect on the postal reform process in Japan. Inspired by the postal reform experience in Japan, the author thinks that Taiwan postal service can be reorganized into 3 entities: keeping the general mail delivery as a government-owned business, while bank saving and insurance units can be transformed into private entities. At the same time, we should contemplate on how to ensure fair competition while guaranteeing the provision of a universal postal service.