A Cabinet Office panel plans to eliminate money-wasting undertakings by reassessing some 90 government-run research and development projects.
Cabinet Office officials said the project will commence at the end of this month.
The Council for Science and Technology Policy, chaired by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, will reassess those projects already evaluated by overseeing ministries. Projects will be appraised according to competitiveness, propriety in using taxpayers' money and expected contributions to society, economy and science.
"If the reassessment finds the ministries' self-evaluations to be insufficient, their projects could see a substantial cut in budgeting or even be canceled," a Cabinet Office official said.
The initiative is part of the Cabinet Office's review of the self-evaluation provision for government-run R&D projects under the national R&D guidelines the government set late last year.
Critics and experts have questioned the effectiveness of the provision, saying such self-evaluations is likely to produce lenient results.
Affected projects include the H-IIA rocket project undertaken by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology; the intelligent transport system of the Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications; and bio-recycling research by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.
The council will report its findings at a meeting at the end of September.
Separately, the council will also evaluate neuroscience research projects, the International Space Station program and other projects whose budgets are several tens of billions of yen, they said.