The Cabinet decided Saturday to submit a bill next year to demonstrate its resolve to maintain Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's initiative to streamline government agencies.

The bill, to be presented in the ordinary Diet session starting in January, will feature basic policies for reducing payroll costs for national employees, cutting the number of special budget accounts and consolidating government-affiliated financial institutions.

Koizumi wants to enact the bill so his streamlining drive will not be reversed after he steps down as prime minister. He has said he will leave office when his term as president of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party expires in September.

Speaking at a meeting Saturday of a task force to promote administrative streamlining, he said he wants all Cabinet ministers to take the initiative in drafting the bill.

Under the bill, the government would reduce the number of national civil servants, excluding Japan Post workers, from the current 687,000 by at least 5 percent, or 34,300 people, over the next five years.

Japan Post, the public corporation for postal services, will be privatized over a 10-year period starting in October 2007.

The government will merge five of the eight government-affiliated financial institutions into a single entity in fiscal 2008 that will meet the financing needs of small firms, farmers and fishermen, and industrial development in Okinawa.

The two others will be fully privatized and the remaining one will be abolished.

The bill would call for consolidating five of the 31 special budget accounts into one account by fiscal 2008. The five are those for road, river, harbor and airport improvements as well as financing of urban development.