[Provisional Translation]

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe held the 16th meeting of the Administrative Reform Promotion Council at the Prime Minister’s Office.

During the meeting, discussions took place on “improvement and strengthening of the review of administrative programs,” “improvement measures for implementation in FY 2015,” “strengthening of inspections conducted by the Administrative Reform Promotion Council,” “reorganization of the Expenditure Reform Working Group,” and “selection of outstanding cases of procurement improvement measures.”  

Based on the discussion, the Prime Minister said,

“Since its establishment, the Abe administration has been working steadily to eliminate waste. Last year, we conducted a review under the framework of this Administrative Reform Promotion Council and did not even allow the Cabinet’s key policies to be treated as sacred or off-limits. Through this, we were able to achieve approximately 100 billion yen in waste reduction. In addition, we were able to ensure a further sum of over 300 billion yen in repayments to the national treasury through the re-examination of all 174 funds managed by public service corporations.

However, fiscal conditions are still difficult. While strictly reviewing each individual operation and eliminating waste is a matter of course, we also need to go further and delve deep into the structure that produces waste, which is firmly rooted in policies and systems.
For that purpose, we will first seek rigorous self-review by each ministry, such as the thorough establishment of quantitative key performance indicators (KPIs) and the strengthening of reviews of funds. In addition, we will hold the 'Autumn Review' regularly.  

We will continue to implement cross-ministry reviews and will not allow even the key policies of the Cabinet to be considered off-limits. Moreover, in order to delve deep into the structure that produces waste, we will newly introduce an inspection initiative in regard to the key issues mentioned in the ‘Autumn Review.’ This continuous initiative will be conducted multiple times and in some cases over multiple years.

In order to advance this initiative, we intend to strengthen the system of the Expenditure Reform Working Group that was established under the framework of this Administrative Reform Promotion Council. I would like to request the continued kind cooperation of all the Council members. Thank you.”