The three ruling parties agreed Wednesday to submit to a bill to the Diet next week to slash the number of state-funded special corporations by the end of fiscal 2005 as a means of streamlining the administration, party officials said.
The Liberal Democratic Party, New Komeito and the New Conservative Party hope the bill will pass before the Dec. 1 end of the ongoing Diet session, they said.
The bill calls for setting up a task force headed by the prime minister tasked with scrutinizing each of the 78 corporations and drafting a blueprint on reforming them within a year after the law would take effect.
The measure urges the government to decide whether to continue, abolish or privatize each corporation, or convert them into "independent administrative corporations" modeled on the British executive agency system.
The special corporations have been set up by the government to nurture and promote specific industries. Among them are bodies to build expressways and other social infrastructure, entities to operate pension and insurance systems and organizations to promote technologies and space development.
Some of them have been criticized for continuing to exist despite lacking a purpose.
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