The Land, Infrastructure and Transport Ministry on Wednesday unveiled a plan to privatize four public corporations under its jurisdiction.

The plan calls for the company's administrative departments to be privatized first to increase operational efficiency, while maintaining the construction departments as public corporations, ministry officials said.

The four entities are the Japan Highway Public Corp., the Metropolitan Expressway Public Corp., the Hanshin Expressway Public Corp., and the Honshu-Shikoku Bridge Authority.

Under the plan, Japan Highway will be privatized in about 20 years, while Metropolitan Expressway and Hanshin Expressway will be privatized in the next 10 years.

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is expected to call for Japan Highway to be sold off earlier as the company is the prime privatization target under his economic reforms.

Chikage Ogi, minister of land, infrastructure and transport, said in a Aug. 26 television program that the four public corporations would be integrated into one entity when privatized.

But the ministry has decided this plan will be difficult to realize in one go due to the investment made by local governments in Metropolitan Expressway, Hanshin Expressway, and the Honshu-Shikoku Bridge Authority.

Koizumi is seeking to cut public works spending by freezing Japan Highway's current projects. He has said it is necessary to review the plan to complete 11,520 km of expressway nationwide in the early 2000s.

But Japan Highway is hoping to go ahead with plans for 9,342 km of new highways, saying the plan is viable if tolls are kept at present levels and if the state pays 300 billion yen annually.

The ministry is considering turning the Honshu-Shikoku Bridge Authority into a special company with partial government ownership, the officials said.

Reforming the authority will focus on the repayment of loans from the central and local governments and the private sector, which came to 4.588 trillion yen in fiscal 2000.

The land ministry intends to privatize the authority when a scheme to repay the loans is worked out.