Numerical targets are much in vogue these days. The post-election Koizumi government also seems to have caught the bug in light of the Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy's latest plans for managing the economy over the medium to longer term.
Japan's gross domestic product is the CEFP's chosen yardstick for measuring progress in downsizing the public sector. Thus the civil service payroll should be pared down to half of its current percentage of GDP within the next decade. Loans outstanding by government-sponsored financial institutions should likewise be halved in relation to GDP in the coming years. Increases in health-care spending should be pegged to GDP growth to prevent runaway cost burdens.
If the CEFP gets its way with all this, we should start paying more attention to what GDP is.