Japan admits to lost pension mess

By Chris Hogg
BBC News, Tokyo

The owners of 10 million pensions might never be identified

Japan's government has warned it is having difficulties identifying more than a third of pension account holders whose funds have been mismanaged.

Earlier this year ministers admitted that roughly 50 million people would have to check whether or not their pension records were accurate.

The advice followed the discovery of mistakes by social insurance agents.

Officials pledged to sort out the mess by the end of next March, but now say it is proving harder than they thought.

Voter anger

The latest twist in this complicated affair is front-page news in Japan.

Government officials have spent months trying to identify exactly which pension accounts there are problems with.

Now they say that in almost 20 million cases, they are finding it hard to confirm who owns what.

The true owners of nearly 10 million of those accounts might never be identified.

The pressure is building on the government.

The fact it is unlikely to finish the identification process by next spring will anger the voters, some of whom have spent a lifetime contributing to a pension that the government is now saying it has no record of.