OSAKA -- Leaders of four Osaka-based business organizations and the Japan Federation of Economic Organizations (Keidanren) agreed Tuesday on a plan for how the private sector should finance the construction of a second runway at Kansai International Airport.

The business community has been discussing ways of dividing the 42 billion yen financial burden needed between fiscal 1996 and 2011 to complete the runway by 2007 and which the private sector has pledged to pay. The leaders said they will ask 970 shareholding firms of Kansai International Airport Co. to make additional investments worth about 70 percent of what each has initially invested.

They said they will also try to invite new investors, focusing mainly on the airport's business partners that have not yet made any investments. "We definitely must complete this second-phase project, because it is important, not only for the Kansai region but for the whole nation, to have an international hub airport in the age of megacompetition," said Yasuo Shingu, chairman of the Kansai Economic Federation.

The Transport Ministry has made a budgetary request of as much as 102.9 billion yen for the project for fiscal 1998, despite the government's policy to squeeze overall public works spending. Shingu said he believes now is the time for the private sector to commit to its role in the project.