One day before the realigned bureaucracy debuts, Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori on Friday urged his Cabinet to continue showing leadership in the face of sweeping changes to government ministries and agencies.
Mori praised his Cabinet's efforts to lay the groundwork for today's debut of the realigned entities, whose number will be reduced to 13 from 23 in pursuit of more efficiency and flexibility in central government operations.
Although some of the existing ministries will sport new names starting today, all the members in the current Mori Cabinet will stay -- the number of Cabinet members was already adjusted in the December reshuffle.
During his address, Mori also stressed that the imminent task for the government is to get the still stagnant economy back on a full recovery track by swiftly having the fiscal 2001 state budget approved by the Diet.
Construction Minister Chikage Ogi said that regional bureaus of the new ministry she will preside over are still far from being integrated. She predicted that some problems lie ahead in the process of realigning the bureaucracy.
"Local bureaus of the Transport and Construction ministries are to be integrated, but they are in separate buildings," said Ogi.
Ogi said she asked Finance Minister Kiichi Miyazawa earlier in the day to allocate budgets over several years for new joint construction to integrate local bureaus, in order to head off expected criticism of vertical sectionalism.
The four government bodies that Ogi heads -- the Construction Ministry, Transport Ministry, National Land Agency and Hokkaido Development Agency -- will re-emerge today as the Land, Infrastructure and Transport Ministry.
"It's just like a honeymoon," Ogi said. "Sometimes you find out some faults that you didn't notice before getting married."