Yokohama city announced on Wednesday that it is postponing its Implementation Policy announcement for two months from its initial schedule of June to August 2020.
The revised schedule comes as the city focuses its efforts on tackling the spread of COVID-19. The policy for the bid will remain unchanged.
An explanation of the policy previously set to be provided to the city council’s standing committee at the end of April has also been postponed — to late June.
Due to the coronavirus outbreak, six of 18 wards have not held their residents’ briefings and it has not yet been determined when they will resume. The city’s policy is to recruit an operator in 2020 and apply to the national government for IR certification in 2021.
The Implementation Policy defines the key framework, including the scale of an IR, its concept, security measures and similar issues. The city announced the draft in March and comments from the general public were accepted up to 6 April, with over 5,000 opinions submitted.
“As a city, I would like to make efforts toward the schedule, especially since the national government has not changed its own policy [in accepting applications for IR certification from January to July 2021],” said Mayor Fumiko Hayashi.