The navy yesterday said it has not been asked by the US to pay NT$12 billion as planning fees for eight diesel-powered submarines that Washington has promised to acquire for Taiwan.
"The US has asked for only a relatively small amount of money as the planning fee. The amount is by no means as large as the NT$12 billion reported by a newspaper," said Rear Admiral Tung Hsiang-lung (董翔龍), chief of the navy's Bureau of Plans.
"For the moment, the submarine deal is still at the pre-phase stage. During this stage, the focus is on the selection of contractors for the building of the submarines. It is scheduled to take one and a half years," Tung said.
"By the end of this year, we will be able to determine the type of submarine that we want to have," he said.
Tung made the remarks at a regular Ministry of National Defense press conference in response to inquiries about reports in a Chinese-language newspaper over the past two days that the US was asking for NT$12 billion in planning fees.
The reports, quoting anonymous sources, alleged that the US was unwilling to explain how the money would be used.
Some ministry officials suspect that some of the money might be used for non-submarine related purposes, the reports said, such as financing some consulting firms of the International Program Office (IPO) of the US military, they said.
The navy said the US has explained how it will spend the money.
"The two sides might have different opinions about the submarine deal. But these differences are only about how to divide stages of the project and how appropriations for the project are to be used," Tung said.
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