East Asian Transportation Forum
This high-level forum was designed to facilitate multilateral discussions of overall transportation policies in East Asia. The first forum was held in Tokyo in November 1996, attended by vice-ministerial transport officials from most East Asian countries. During the forum, participants present the policy tasks of their respective East Asian countries, describe the current situation of cooperation within ASEAN, and discuss the development of infrastructure. The 2nd forum was to be held in the Philippines in 1997, but was postponed due to the financial crisis in the region. Meanwhile, the countries agreed to encourage meetings of industry experts as well. A director for the division level meeting on the theme of transportation and environment was held in February 1998, and a director-general of the bureau level meeting on the theme of physical distribution was held in May of the same year.
BOT
BOT (Build-Operate-Transfer) is a method for developing and administrating infrastructure by private sector activation. Under this system, the private sector builds and operates facilities with permission from the public sector, then transfers the facility to the public authorities after recovering the investment funds by collecting usage fees. Similar concepts include BTO (Build-Transfer-Operate), BLT (Build-Lease-Transfer), BOO (Build-Own-Operate), and RLT (Rehabilitate-Lease-Transfer). To make up for cuts in government funding, Britain introduced the PFI (Private Finance Initiative) program under the initiative of the Treasury in 1992 to utilize private sector funds and management know-how in areas previously developed and managed by the public sector. In a sense, a similar system is used in road construction by the Japan Highway Public Corporation and local road public corporations, which collects toll fees until the construction costs are redeemed, then offers free use of the road.
