Bureaucrats are opposed to a large portion of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's plans to privatize or abolish public corporations, according to government reports recently submitted to the Cabinet Office.
Each ministry and agency submitted its own ideas for reforming and streamlining 153 of the government's public corporations, one of the key issues that will sway the fate of the Koizumi plan to structurally reform the government.
Although the details of their ideas have not been officially announced, the bureaucrats apparently sought to keep the status quo and maintain their grip on public firms, government sources said.
The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry said that its Labor Welfare Corp. is too difficult to abolish or privatize, while the Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry said that one of its affiliated firms, which promotes education through private schools, "does not fit privatization."
The Land, Infrastructure, Transport Ministry meanwhile said that the 25 firms under its control "cannot be privatized." The ministry, which controls six of the most controversial firms in the privatization debate, including debt-ridden Japan Highway Public Corp. and the Housing Loan Corp., maintained that the six "cannot be abolished" and that it is still discussing whether they can be privatized.
The transport ministry's final answer is expected to come around Sept. 20. Koizumi has strongly urged transport minister Chikage Ogi to privatize the six firms as a symbol of his ongoing reforms.
On a positive note, the education ministry said that the Japan Scholarship Foundation is suitable for privatization.
A task force at the Cabinet Office led by Administrative Reform Minister Nobuteru Ishihara will conduct hearings for each government ministry and agency and present a blueprint of how their public firms will be streamlined by the end of this month.