Global Trade Alert

 In its annual statement of policies for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), the Government of Japan planned to introduce the following measures (amongst others) in 2010:
1. Reduction of obligations on parties with Nippon Export and Investment Insurance (NEXI). This was said to encourage lending to SMEs.
2. Low interest loans for SMEs engaged in the development of new markets for those technologies specified under the SME Technological Advancement Act.
3. Standarisation of SME "system platforms." The document states "The aim of this program is to raise the international competitiveness of Japan's embedded systems industries, in which there are many SMEs, both by raising the reliability of embedded systems and putting forward the resulting outputs as international standards" (page 205).
The trade-related contingency of these measures effectively introduces discrimination against competing SMEs based in other countries.