Japan Opens Door to U.S. Building Firms

U.S. construction companies will be allowed to bid for nearly $17 billion of work on 10 Japanese public works projects under agreements signed Wednesday.

Commerce Secretary C. William Verity and Japanese Ambassador Nobuo Matsunaga signed five letters outlining the agreement allowing U.S. and other foreign firms to bypass requirements for prior experience in Japanese construction projects.

A monitoring committee will review Japanese compliance with the agreements in two years, “so that we can be sure our companies are getting a fair shake,” Verity said.

Matsunaga said he now hopes that the United States will lift a retaliatory ban on Japanese participation in U.S. construction projects passed by Congress in December.

Hope Limitation Will be Lifted

“It is our hope and expectation that the limitation . . . will be lifted as quickly as possible,” Matsunaga said.

One of the letters said the agreement allowing U.S. firms to bid equally with Japanese firms “will be suspended should limits on Japanese participation in U.S. public works be continued after Sept. 30,” the date the amendment expires.

Sen. Frank Murkowski (R-Alaska), one of the authors of the amendment, said at the signing ceremony, the amendment was “simply to encourage countries that had less than open markets to the United States. . . . It is simply a matter of equity.”

He said the ban would expire at the end of September but refused to say he would move to have it lifted before then.

“I am convinced Japan has nothing to fear from the Congress in terms of sanctions so long as Japan lives up to the letter of this agreement,” Verity said.

The projects now open for bids from U.S. firms include the Kansai International Airport, the Tokyo Bay Bridge and the NTT Headquarters building that had been covered by agreements reached last fall.

They also include Japanese government portions of the Haneda Airport expansion, the new Hiroshima Airport, the Tokyo Port redevelopment, the Ise Bay highway, the Akashi Straits bridge, the Yokohama Minato Mirai 21 project, and the Kansai Cultural and Science City.

The officials estimated the work open to U.S. bidding will total $16.9 billion over the next 10 to 12 years.