Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi relaunched his reform offensive Monday, vowing to "boldly scale down" government by privatizing the postal services, cutting personnel costs and reforming state-backed financial institutions.
However, in his policy speech to the special Diet session, he offered neither numerical targets nor a timetable to guide his renewed pledge for small government. Instead, he focused on his plan to privatize the giant state-run mail, postal savings and insurance institution. He began by repeating his vow to slash the number of government workers.
"I will review their salary structures and set a net-reduction target for the number of state government workers," Koizumi said during his address to the Diet. "I will boldly scale down the size of the government by implementing structural reforms like these."