The National Personnel Authority is set to recommend keeping national public servants' monthly pay unchanged for the second straight year in fiscal 2013, sources said.

The authority made the recommendation because national civil servant salaries are not much higher than private-sector wages.

The authority appears to have also taken into account that the Diet last year enacted legislation for an average 7.8 percent cut in national civil servants' overall income as a provisional step for two years from April 2012 to secure funds for reconstruction of the quake- and tsunami-hit Tohoku region.

The authority may also propose no cut for national bureaucrats' bonuses.