Japan plans to sell two-thirds of the nation’s state-owned postal bank and postal insurance company, Deputy Financial Services Minister Kouhei Ohtsuka said. The management of Japan Post Holdings Co., of which the post bank and postal insurance company are part, will determine whether the company is listed on the stock exchange, he said in Tokyo today.

The government also aims to double the amount of deposits the postal bank can collect from individual customers to 20 million yen ($220,000), Ohtsuka’s superior, Financial Services Minister Shizuka Kamei, said in a separate statement.

Under legislation pushed through by former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi in October 2005, the Japan had planned to sell all its shares in the postal bank, and reduce its asset size before allowing further expansion in services. The government of Yukio Hatoyama put all privatization plans on hold after its election last year.

Japan Post Bank Co., with 177 trillion yen in customer deposits at the end of December, is the world’s biggest by this measure. Japan’s largest lender, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc., had 119.1 trillion yen of deposits at the end of December. The government plans to submit a bill to parliament in April to raise the cap from 10 million yen and to address privatization plans for Japan Post, Kamei said.

Kamei and Ohtsuka are also responsible for reform of the postal service. Katsunori Nagayasu, chairman of the Japanese Bankers Association, said yesterday he opposes changing the cap because it may spark an outflow of funds from private banks. The measure could also damp lending by banks to smaller companies, he said.