Actually, preparing a quotation didn't take three whole days. Half a day would have been enough. Of course, Lin Qi wanted to make it look as if we had taken the budget seriously, so he waited until the afternoon of the third day before sending it to the Department of Defense.
The budget he initially provided was around twelve million, mainly for constructing the airport and artillery fortifications.
To be honest, none of this required much technical expertise. For example, was there anything technical about mixing concrete?
Pouring concrete into the designated locations and then laying down a layer of rebar—was there anything technical about that?
Of course not. The core of the budget still lay in the design fees, raw materials, transportation costs, and labor.
Now that the biggest labor cost had come down, cheap labor was everywhere in Nagaril. That alone saved nearly half the cost!
So when the company submitted that budget, Lin Qi directly altered the final figure.
"...Nineteen million."
The people from the Department of Defense fell silent as they looked over the budget. He began carefully turning through the pages one by one. When he reached the end, he raised his eyebrows. "It doesn't seem to have any problems."
He then placed the entire budget at the top of the pile of documents waiting to be handled. It was now the highest-priority matter.
Everyone knew that there was something slightly wrong with the budget. How could such simple work cost nearly twenty million? How could it be so outrageous? But that was precisely how outrageous things were. First, all the labor was calculated according to the wage standards of domestic workers, and then overseas-work allowances were added on top. That alone amounted to a huge sum.
Lin Qi had merely stated, very cleverly at