Many local governments are strengthening ties with information technology firms and making the most of IT in a bid to increase the consumption of local specialties and other products.
It is essential for governments to expand online activities, in which they tended to be slow in the past, to revitalize local economies and companies, all the while making efforts to prevent novel coronavirus infections.
-- Sales shoot up
From September, Ehime Prefecture will begin a special campaign on its Rakuten Ichiba e-commerce page for the sale of local specialty items. Customers who make purchases via the website are to receive a discount voucher.
The prefecture ran a similar campaign in June, and the sales of mikan oranges and other local specialties increased by 3.6 times compared to the same period last year, to 100 million yen. The prefecture presumes that its publicity videos uploaded to the Rakuten website had some effect in encouraging customers to purchase Ehime products.
"By making the most of a major IT company's customer base, we could achieve far greater sales [than before]," an Ehime prefectural government official said.
At first, the prefecture had plans to expand the number of visitors eligible for a discount on accommodation fees for hotels in the prefecture starting August aiming to coincide with the central government's "Go To Travel" travel promotion initiative. Due to coronavirus infections rapidly spreading across the country, however, the prefecture is now prioritizing online activities rather than attempts to bring in more visitors.
-- 3 trillion yen. in financial aid
Initiatives like these are also reinforced by a 3 trillion yen emergency relief for the revitalization of local economies provided by the central government in the supplementary budget for this fiscal year.
In July, the Hamamatsu municipal government launched an initiative to appeal to customers of local restaurants and bars by using the smartphone payment system PayPay, an affiliated enterprise of SoftBank Group Corp. Customers who have paid through the PayPay system will receive reward points worth up to 30% of the total amount paid. The municipal government set aside 500 million yen in total, which includes the grant from the central government, as capital for this service.
The 3 trillion yen is meant for local government endeavors including economic recovery and preventive measures against virus infection. It seems that Hamamatsu used the grant by considering that the promotion of cashless payments will help decrease contact between people, which should result in fewer coronavirus infection.
Similarly, about 30 local governments affiliated with PayPay Corp. are developing their own schemes to offer customers reward points of up to 10% to 30% of the total amount they pay. According to PayPay, more than 300 local governments are in talks with the company to make deals.
-- Getting message out
Major IT companies also have useful know-how when it comes to getting information across, which is a big help to local governments. Korona to Tatakau Oen-mura (Community to fight the coronavirus), a nationwide project comprised of more than 20 local governments, including Kanazawa and Fukuoka City, has become affiliated with Facebook Japan, which advises on ways to publicize their local specialties during a time when people are urged to avoid traveling.
Local governments once lagged behind industries in using cyberspace on the whole. The pandemic, however, has inevitably urged them to make more use of it.
"The revitalization of local industries will speed up if [they] collaborate with the private sector," said Arata Yamasaki of the Japan Research Institute Ltd. "Local governments must also improve the skills of their IT personnel to a greater extent."
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