Nakasone: West Must Enhance Sales Efforts

TOKYO —  Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone told foreign businessmen here Thursday that Japan will open its markets but that “we cannot guarantee how much will be purchased.”

“That will be your responsibility. You have to make the effort to sell,” he told a Yomiuri International Economic Symposium attended by businessmen and diplomats from the United States, Europe and Asia, as well as Japan.

Although Nakasone did not mention Secretary of State George P. Shultz, he indirectly rejected a remark made by Shultz last Saturday after a meeting in Washington with Japanese Foreign Minister Shintaro Abe. Shultz said that “we must begin to hear the (Japanese) cash registers ring.”

The Japanese government has declined to accept statements by Reagan Administration officials that the United States will consider only an actual rise in imports as evidence that Japan is opening its markets to U.S. goods. Nakasone reiterated Japan’s objection to such a measurement by saying that factors beyond his government’s control--such as changes in exchange rates, economic developments in other countries and selling efforts made here--will determine whether imports increase or not.

“It is out of the question to expect guarantees of sales of so many millions or billions of dollars worth of goods or any specific figure (after markets are opened) under a free economy system,” he cautioned the businessmen.

The prime minister stressed especially the need for more foreign efforts to sell in Japan. At one point, he read from a letter to the editor published Wednesday by the Asahi newspaper.

The writer, Toshiro Wakabayashi, 59, a resident of Tokyo’s neighboring state of Chiba, said that he had ordered some British-made audio equipment and received it, in three days, with instructions in Japanese, a certificate of guarantee and the name of the nearest shop where repairs could be made if needed. By contrast, Wakabayashi wrote, he also had ordered a piece of American audio equipment that wasn’t delivered for four months and, when it arrived, was accompanied by no Japanese explanation, no guarantee and no information about repairs.

“Only the most extraordinary consumer would again consider buying from the latter company,” Wakabayashi wrote.

Nakasone cited the letter as an example of what he called the failure of many foreign businessmen to make sufficient efforts to sell here.

Nakasone also indirectly rejected an appeal by Shultz for Japan to take action to reduce its high savings rate and promote more consumption at home.

He declared that a massive outflow of capital from Japanese savings to the United States has become “a major element of U.S. economic activity,” helping finance both the U.S. budget deficit and American private investment. He also said that government and private investment in Japan already is far higher as a percentage of GNP than it is in the United States--28.4% in Japan, compared to 16.9% in the United States.

The prime minister reiterated pledges to continue working to promote imports, saying that he was prepared to accept the criticism that he is already getting for acting like “a salesman for foreign firms.”

On Nakasone’s instructions, Keijiro Murata, minister of international trade and industry, next Monday will call in the chief executives of 60 large exporting firms, retailing companies and industrial associations to direct each of them to establish a task force to promote imports. Each task force is to be headed by a vice president or managing director-level executive and will be required to submit a plan to increase imports. The ministry will conduct periodic reviews of the results.