Defense Agency chief Fukushiro Nukaga said Friday that 178 companies will be temporarily barred from bidding for defense facilities contracts following a series of bid-rigging incidents.

Nukaga, the agency's director general, told a news conference the restrictions apply to future contracts paid for from the the Defense Facilities Administration Agency's budget for fiscal 2005, which ends March 31.

The agency froze all bidding on projects when the misdeeds became public. About 120.2 billion yen in the fiscal 2005 budget remains unspent.