The Land, Infrastructure and Transport Ministry has conceded in a white paper that its explanations of the need for and efficacy of public works projects have been inadequate, according to an outline of the paper obtained Wednesday by Kyodo News.
In the outline, the ministry vows to increase efforts to explain such projects more clearly.
"It is undeniable that our efforts to explain the necessity and effectiveness of public works projects have been inadequate in some aspects," says the outline of the planned white paper on government infrastructure and transportation policies.
The paper, to be released in mid-February on CD-ROM, will be the first since a major governmental restructuring in early 2001 merged the Construction Ministry, the National Land Agency and the Transport Ministry into the Land, Infrastructure and Transport Ministry.
The outline says the accuracy of techniques for forecasting traffic volume and highway tolls on planned expressways needs to be improved because it will be the taxpayers who pay the difference between the predicted and actual toll revenues.
A select group of public works projects must be emphasized, and related costs must be cut in view of the fiscal constraints on the national treasury, the outline states.
But the outline rejects criticism that the usefulness of public works in expanding the economy has eroded.
Japan's ballooning government debt -- the largest in the industrial world -- has been caused chiefly by the state's use of fiscal spending packages to rev up the faltering economy and by the nation's swelling social welfare expenditures, it adds.
Another reason is that the recent recessions have eaten into tax revenues.
"Construction companies that carry out public works projects have acted as providers of employment opportunities," it says.