As the nation has accumulated extensive experience in the operation of a freeway electronic toll collection (ETC) system and mass rapid transit systems, the government plans to establish task forces within a year to help export these services to other nations, the Public Construction Commission (PCC) said yesterday.
The project is part of a four-year plan to export five important services or technologies in which the nation has built up extensive experience over the years, including petrochemical plants, power plants, soil and groundwater treatment, the freeway ETC system and mass rapid transit systems in metropolitan areas.
Based on the Executive Yuan’s plan, different government agencies are to jointly budget NT$470 million (US$14.41 million) to establish five task forces to help export these services and technologies to other nations.
The first three are to be formed through the coordinated efforts of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Environmental Protection Administration. The last two are to be established by the Ministry of Transportation and Communications’ National Freeway Bureau and the Bureau of High Speed Rail.
Public Construction Commission Minister Jack Hsu (許俊逸) said Global Construction 2025, the third in a series of major global studies of the construction and engineering industries published by Global Construction Perspectives and Oxford Economics, forecast that the volume of construction output would grow to US$15 trillion worldwide by 2025.
He added that the Asian Development Bank forecast that the potential business opportunities in infrastructure projects in Asia would be worth US$8 trillion.
“Taiwan has the professional ability to handle international construction projects, having built the high-speed rail system, mass rapid transit systems, the Wugu-Yangmei Overpass, the Hsuehshan Tunnel and Taipei 101,” Hsu said.
The commission said in a statement that the government has also established a platform to help companies in the five categories secure the loans needed when bidding for overseas contracts, with the available credit topping NT$566 billion.
The National Freeway Bureau said the nation is the first in the world to have an ETC system installed on all national freeways after it succeeded in migrating from a manual toll collection system to the ETC system.
The achievement helped the bureau to win the International Bridge, Tunnel and Turnpike Association’s Toll Excellence Award this year, the bureau said.
The association said Taiwan’s ETC system has an average of 14 million transactions per day, adding that the system has achieved an accuracy rate of 99.97 percent and detection accuracy of 99.9 percent, the highest in the world.
Far Eastern Electronic Toll Collection Co, the contractor operating the ETC system, said it signed a contract with the Vietnamese government at the end of last year in which the company is to consult on the installation and operation of an ETC system in Vietnam.
The company said Vietnamese officials were impressed with how the nation is able to carry out a multiple-lane free-flow mechanism on freeways during a visit in July last year.
Aside from Vietnam, the company said that it is discussing business opportunities with potential partners in Southeast Asian nations and the Middle East.
The Bureau of High Speed Rail said that it has accumulated valuable experience in planning, designing, constructing and maintaining metro systems.
The bureau said it would meet with the metro operators in Taipei and Kaohsiung, and service contractors to figure out the best way to export the nation’s know-how.
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