Leaders of Japan's five major business organizations called for greater government efforts March 16 to seek Diet approval of planned legislation for administrative reform.

Due to the delay in deliberations over the fiscal 1998 state budget and other pending bills, there now seems to be a slim chance that the bill designed to create the basic framework for reorganizing the nation's bureaucracy will be enacted by the end of the current Diet session.

In a meeting with Sadatoshi Ozato, chief of the Management and Coordination Agency who is also in charge of administrative reform, Jiro Ushio, chief of the Japan Association of Corporate Executives (Keizai Doyukai), said that passing the bill and steadily implementing reform will shore up the faltering economy. Commenting on the planned reorganization of the government ministries and agencies, Jiro Nemoto, chairman of the Japan Federation of Employers' Associations (Nikkeiren), said that people from the private sector as well as scholars should be included in a governmental headquarters to be set up to implement the reform measures. Ozato replied that the government will make the utmost effort to pass the reform bill through the Diet.