Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2674 actions· ✨ 91 recent

On 26 December 2025, Japan's Cabinet approved the FY2026 (Reiwa 8) initial budget, which allocates a new JPY 415 billion (~USD 2.7bn) line to the "Low-Carbon Hydrogen Hub Development Support Project" (低炭素水素 等拠点整備支援事業), administered by METI's Agency for Natural Resources and Energy (ANRE) through JOGMEC under the Hydrogen Society Promotion Act framework enacted in 2024. The programme subsidises Front-End Engineering Design (FEED) and construction costs for shared transport and storage infrastructure -- tanks, pipelines and receiving-terminal equipment -- built jointly by multiple businesses to move low-carbon hydrogen and its derivatives (ammonia, e-methane, synthetic fuels) from import/production points to industrial users. It sits alongside, but is administratively distinct from, JOGMEC's separately-run "price-gap" (kakakusa) 15-year CfD offtake support for hydrogen suppliers. The budget takes effect with Japan's fiscal year on 1 April 2026, subject to ordinary Diet passage in early 2026.

Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) and the Cabinet Office jointly published the Shipbuilding Revival Roadmap (造船業再生ロードマップ) on 26 December 2025, redefining shipbuilding as a "national strategic industry" within an All-Japan shipping-and-shipbuilding framework. The Roadmap targets doubling domestic shipbuilding capacity from ~9 million GT to 18 million GT by 2035 (re-capturing roughly 20% global market share) backed by a ¥1 trillion (~USD 6.4 bn) public-private investment commitment over three staged phases (2026-28 automation, 2029-31 facility expansion, 2032-34 dock-operation support), mandates consolidation of domestic shipbuilders into 1-3 groups by 2028, and is funded in its first three years by a ¥120 bn FY2025 supplementary budget enacted in December 2025.

Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC), Japan's state export-credit and outbound-investment finance institution, signed a loan agreement on 2025-12-22 providing JPY 135 billion (approx. USD 865 million) to Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, Ltd. (MOL), co-financed alongside private financial institutions for a total facility of JPY 250 billion. The loan finances part of the funds MOL used to acquire LBC Tank Terminals Group Holding Netherlands Coöperatief U.A., a chemical tank-terminal operator with core operations in Europe and the US; the acquisition itself completed in June 2025.

Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC), Japan's state export-credit and outbound-investment finance institution, signed a loan agreement on 2025-12-22 providing approximately USD 189 million toward a syndicated facility for UnicornMark Discovery Pte. Ltd., a special-purpose vehicle incorporated by Mitsui O.S.K. Lines (MOL) to own Singapore's first floating storage and regasification unit (FSRU). Co-lenders are MUFG Bank, DBS Bank, Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation, and Standard Chartered (Singapore). The vessel will be chartered to Singapore LNG Corporation, the state-owned LNG terminal operator, under a leasing/operation/maintenance arrangement.

Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC), Japan's state export-credit and outbound-investment finance institution, signed a loan agreement on 2025-06-27 providing USD 252 million toward a syndicated facility for White Eagle Energy Limited, a Cyprus-registered special-purpose vehicle wholly owned by Mitsui O.S.K. Lines (MOL). Co-lenders are Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation and Crédit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank. The facility finances White Eagle's acquisition of a newly built floating storage and regasification unit (FSRU) — Poland's first — which will be chartered to Operator Gazociągów Przesyłowych GAZ-SYSTEM S.A., Poland's state-owned gas transmission operator, under a leasing/operation/maintenance arrangement.

Japan's Cabinet approved an amendment to the Cabinet Order on Inward Direct Investment under the Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade Act (FEFTA) on 1 April 2025; the order was promulgated 4 April 2025 and entered into force 19 May 2025. The amendment introduces two new investor categories — Type-A (investors legally or contractually obligated to share information with foreign governments) and Type-B (investors effectively in a comparable position without formal legal obligation) — and eliminates or narrows exemptions from mandatory prior-notification screening for both categories. The primary driver is concern over minority-stake acquisitions by Chinese investors in Japanese listed companies operating in sensitive sectors including cloud computing, telecommunications infrastructure, semiconductor equipment, and advanced electronics. The reform is structurally distinct from the outbound FEFTA catch-all controls overhaul (2025-10-09) and from the Economic Security Promotion Act (2022-05-18); it is the inbound FDI-screening complement to that framework.

Japan's National Diet enacted the Cyber Response Capability Enhancement Act (重要電子計算機に対する不正な行為による被害の防止に関する法律, Law No. 42 of 2025) on 16 May 2025, together with companion arrangement legislation. Commonly known as the Active Cyber Defense (ACD) Law, the statute authorises (i) government monitoring of foreign-origin internet traffic transiting designated Japanese communication infrastructure for national-security threat indicators, (ii) pre-emptive access and neutralisation operations against attacker infrastructure abroad by the National Police Agency and the Self-Defense Forces under unified command, and (iii) mandatory cyber-incident reporting and government cooperation duties on critical-infrastructure operators. Implementation is phased through November 2027, with the NISC reorganised into the National Cybersecurity Office (NCO) under the Cabinet Secretariat from July 2025.