OECD Regulatory Policy Outlook 2025

In 2017, ex post evaluation was introduced into Japan’s Regulatory Evaluation Guidelines which had formerly stipulated ex ante evaluation. Following this addition, coupled with a burden reduction package which ran from 2017-2020, Japan has made incremental improvements to its regulatory policy more recently. Some ex ante evaluation reports relating to subordinate regulations are released for public consultation via the e-gov portal. In order to prove benefits outweigh the costs, both direct costs and benefits should be monetised in principle, but if this is not possible, at least compliance costs need to be quantified. Regulatory alternatives and the associated monitoring also should be stated in ex ante regulation reports. All ex ante evaluations should be reviewed within five years as ex post evaluations. The review uses the original ex ante evaluation as the baseline to determine whether expected impacts materialised as anticipated. The linking of both ex ante and ex post evaluations also provides the opportunity to better engage with stakeholders, though stakeholders are only sometimes consulted on ex post evaluations.

Japan’s regulatory policy includes two important bodies. One is the Council for Promotion of Regulatory Reform, which is an advisory board to the Prime Minister set up in the Cabinet Office. The functions are to investigate regulatory issues needed for structural reform, and to submit a recommendation to the Prime Minister. The Administrative Evaluation Bureau of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications supports and inspects regulatory evaluation activities in each ministry and agency, and is responsible for developing and managing related guidelines and portal sites.