Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori on Monday instructed the Finance Ministry to get ready to introduce a special quota for information technology projects in the fiscal 2001 budget, government officials said.

The move reflects Mori's view that IT should be a major vehicle in Japan's ongoing structural reform efforts and increase its economic growth potential, the officials said.

The envisaged budget framework may be larger than the 250 billion yen set aside in the fiscal 2000 budget for so-called "millennium projects," centering on telecommunications, technology and the environment, they said.