Regarding the media coverage of “National Defense Industry Act Passed Dominantly, Autocratic Manufacturer Classification and Grading, Grasps on the Annual Hundred Billions of Armament Budget Swiftly”, Ministry of National Defense has provided the following explanations today (2^nd):

1. Ministry of National Defense submitted the draft of the “National Defense Industry Development Act (hereinafter as the act)” to the Executive Yuan in September 2017 for review, then the Executive Yuan convened multiple interagency meetings to rigorously review the draft within the duration of 1 year and 5 months; the draft was then sent to the Legislative Yuan on January 19^th 2019 for review, where a total of 3 legislators proposed different versions, and the Legislative Yuan convened a public hearing for each version respectively on April 8^th. Apart from consulting the opinions of each sector, during the joint meeting of the Foreign and National Defense Committee and the Economics Committee on April 10-11^th, as well as when the Legislative Yuan was reviewing on the act on May 31^st, the legislators from various political parties also respected the proposed amendments, and incorporated them into the revised act. Based on this result, the act was passed by the session through reading, and has incorporated the opinions from each sector. During the duration of more than 2 and a half years, Legislative Yuan has rigorously completed evaluation and planning of the act without rushing in the approval procedure.

2. Regarding the establishment of the manufacturer classification and grading system, it takes into account that each construction plan can be produced by domestic manufacturers with capacity in priority, whereas Ministry of National Defense and Ministry of Economic Affairs co-implement the domestic capacity evaluation for the existing evaluation mechanism, which is already equipped with the foundation of relevant procedures. After this legislation, evaluation can be regularly implemented each year in accordance with the law to understand the capacity and safety management of manufacturers, which helps to lower the risks for each construction plan, and prevents from manufacturers without capacity accepting projects that are unable to be fulfilled; furthermore, the opinion of “evaluation should be implemented by a just third party who is not an interested party of the target of authentication” proposed by legislators was also incorporated during the review of the act, hence doubts regarding autocracy, one-stop system, or profiting from a certain targets are non-existent.

3. As for the question of whether the National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology is in a favorable position, the institute must also undergo specifications including expertise grading and evaluation, safety inspection, and procurement competition after the act has been legislated. Regarding each construction plan, both the ministry and the services specify control nodes and convene project management meetings, as well as execute on-site performance supervision rigorously and implement the responsibilities of supervision. For the various military items (including weapons, ammunitions, combat materials, software and hardware for military purposes), all domestic juridical persons, institutions, or groups that are established by the Constitution of the Republic of China, apart from the National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology, are able to participate the fair competition for researching, manufacturing, and repairing military items according to their area of expertise under the condition of being in line with the grading management and safety inspection. Ministry of National Defense hereby clarifies that speculations regarding National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology being in a favorable position, or that it is being commissioned for every single project, are merely speculations.