Public support for the cabinet of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi rose to 49 percent in a latest survey, up 2 percentage points from earlier this month, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported Tuesday.

The disapproval rating rose 2 points to 39 percent in the telephone survey conducted from Saturday to Monday, up from the previous survey on Aug. 9-10, the business daily said.

The paper attributed the rise in support to the public's approval of Koizumi's dissolution of the House of Representatives on Aug. 8 for a general election on Sept. 11 immediately after his postal privatization bills were voted down by the House of Councilors, saying he aims to pass the bills in the next parliamentary session.

The survey found that 44 percent of respondents favor Koizumi's policy of postal services privatization, while 22 percent support the opposition Democratic Party of Japan's policy to streamline the postal services.

The ruling Liberal Democratic Party saw the approval rating rose 1 point to 46 percent, while the DPJ suffered a drop of 1 point to 19 percent.

The newspaper conducted the nationwide survey on 1,694 households and it received valid responses from 988, or 58.3 percent, of them.

(Xinhua News Agency August 23, 2005)