"This time we don't need cabinet members who need to be taught the ABCs of economics from bureaucrats," quipped the financial daily Nihon Keizai Shimbun on Tuesday.

Whoever takes over the top finance post in a new Japanese cabinet to be formed later this month will need plenty of expertise to cope with a tough agenda that includes a banking system bad-loan clean-up and touchy tax reform.

Analysts said it was too early to predict who might assume the position, since leaders of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) were currently huddling to pick a successor to prime minister Ryutaro Hashimoto. Some of the candidates seen as leading contenders for the top post -- such as former prime minister Kiichi Miyazawa and conservative veteran Seiroku Kajiyama -- are also possibilities for the finance portfolio. But other candidates couldwell yet emerge.

Hashimoto said on Monday he would resign as party president -- the first step to resigning as prime minister -- to take responsibility for the LDP's disastrous showing in Sunday's Upper House election. The party will select Hashimoto's successor as president on July 21 and a new prime minister is expected to be confirmed by parliament around July 30. The LDP chief is assured the job by virtue of the party's majority in the more powerful Lower House.

Finance minister Hikaru Matsunaga, a little-known former lawyer who assumed his post in January after his predecessor resigned over a scandal at the ministry, has appeared out of his depth in the face of Japan's deep economic woes and the regional crisis in Asia.

There had already been hopes Matsunaga would be replaced in a cabinet reshuffle that had been expected to follow Sunday's election even if the LDP did reasonably well.