Japan Plans Shift in Public Works Assessment Criteria

The government plans to stop putting too much focus on cost effectiveness when assessing the feasibility of public works projects, sources said Monday. The government will shift its focus to an overall assessment that places an emphasis on basic functions to protect lives and livelihoods, under annual guidelines for economic and fiscal reform policy, due out next month.

Draft guidelines list expressways, some shinkansen lines and the planned Chuo Shinkansen high-speed magnetic levitation train line as key areas of focus for infrastructure development. The government will accelerate its push to build what are known as autoflow roads, or dedicated road lanes used by automated vehicles to transport goods.

It will also promote the use of robots that can operate autonomously at construction sites to address labor shortages.

The guidelines will also call for reviewing how public works projects are funded. Currently, necessary funds are set aside under initial and supplementary budgets. The draft seeks to reduce the government’s reliance on supplementary budgets, saying funding for long-running projects will be covered under initial budgets.

Under the plan, there will be no upper limit on funding requests for such projects when assembling an initial budget. The draft says that a supplementary budget will be limited to emergency projects.