4.4 • 796 Ratings
🗓️ 30 March 2023
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Japan is the world’s fastest ageing country, nearly 30% of Japan’s population is already over 65. Devina Gupta looks into what the ever decreasing workforce means for businesses in Japan.
Many companies are pouring resources into developing advanced robots and artificial intelligence to do human work. Mikio Okumura- president of one of Japan’s largest insurance companies - Sompo Holdings, tells us his company has recently started using AI to analyse complex data to predict the health risks of individuals.
Many small and medium businesses owners nearing retirement age are also struggling to find successors. Japan’s trade ministry has warned that by 2025 over half a million profitable businesses could close, costing the economy $165 billion. Tsuneo Watanabe, a director of Nihon M&A Center, a company that specializes in finding buyers for such enterprises tells us how they're trying to solve the problem.
Producer / presenter: Devina Gupta Image: Senior citizens advertising in Tokyo; Credit: Getty Images
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0:00.0 | abnormal transactions. |
0:03.0 | Some kind of cyber attack on a bank. |
0:05.1 | Tens of millions of dollars. |
0:07.0 | Something I don't think anybody has seen before. |
0:09.1 | It's a cyber criminal group. |
0:10.7 | From the BBC World Service. |
0:12.5 | The Lazarus Heist is back for season two. |
0:14.7 | It was really like in the movies. |
0:16.2 | Find out more at the end of this podcast. |
0:23.2 | This is a small kindergarten in Edugawa City in Japan. |
0:27.2 | It's about half an hour away from Japan's capital city of Tokyo. |
0:31.4 | In any other country, this would be just another regular classroom, with children's |
0:36.0 | drawings on the wall, books in colorful pictures |
0:38.8 | in one corner, and a white board that has musical notes scribbled on it. But in Japan, it's |
0:45.8 | a symbol of hope for the country's fight to stay young. After all, it's the world's fastest |
0:52.7 | aging country with fewer than 800,000 births last year. |
0:57.8 | I'm Devina Gupta. Welcome to this edition of Business Daily. |
1:02.9 | Did you know nearly 30% of Japan's population is already above 65 years of age? |
1:09.7 | That's around 37 million people. |
1:13.3 | And they're just getting older. |
1:16.5 | Such is the situation that the Japanese Statistics Bureau |
1:19.6 | in a report in 2017 warned that if the birth rate doesn't improve, |
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