PUTRAJAYA, Sept 3 — Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim today announced the formation of a rationalisation secretariat for statutory bodies.

He said the context of rationalisation here is to reduce, tidy-up and monitor expenditure.

“Recently we’ve decided to set up a committee to ensure rationalisation is done for statutory bodies as there are too many statutory bodies and are overlapping,” Anwar, who is also finance minister, said in his monthly address at the Finance Ministry here.

Yesterday, Anwar said the civil service’s performance has been commendable, but added that there is still room for improvement.

He said the merging of agencies and departments has not been satisfactory as there were many roles that overlapped, resulting in inefficiency.

He also expressed dissatisfaction with reports from heads of department regarding the sluggishness and negligence of some officers.