Main characteristics of Japanese Official Development Assistance (ODA) flows
At the end of the 1990s, the Japanese government distributed annually more than US$10 billion as foreign aid directly or indirectly to developing countries. Japan’s ODA can be divided into the following four groups: 1) Bilateral Grants, 2) Technical Co-operation, 3) Multilateral Aid, and 4) Bilateral Loans. In 2001, Bilateral Grants made up 19.3 percent of Japan’s total ODA budget; Technical Co-operation constituted 29.7 percent; Multilateral Aid and Bilateral Loans accounted for 24.7 percent and 26.3 percent, respectively. There have been criticisms that Japanese ODA loans have been provided mainly for economic infrastructure projects only. In response to these criticisms, the Japanese government claims to have made efforts to channel these loans into various social sectors, such as agricultural projects or rural development.
Japan's changing official development assistance : how institutional reforms affected the role of Japan's private sector in ODA delivery
Despite its OECD membership and transformation from aid recipient into a major donor of official development assistance (ODA), Japan has long been criticized for pursuing commercial interests through its infrastructure-focused ODA, which has heavily relied on its own corporate private sector for implementation. Throughout the last two decades, institutional reforms have altered the structure and principles of Japan’s foreign aid; yet not much knowledge has been produced on how these reforms have changed the prominent role of Japan’s private sector in its aid implementation. This thesis undertook this question and applied the theoretical model of the iron triangle, native to political and development studies, to first establish the internal power relations between the involved corporations, bureaucracy and government prior to the reforms. Triangulation of quantitative data from MOFA and OECD statistics with qualitative data from interviews with non-commercial and business professionals in ODA was then conducted to determine how the role of the private sector has changed within the triangle. Further, changes within the private sector were explored. While the ODA-affiliated firms comprising the corporate part of Japan’s private sector have become less influential as a consequence of the reforms, the civilian non-commercial part has gained more weight in aid implementation. (Less)
Ancien régime of Japan’s foreign aid policy: Main characteristics of Japan’s aid administration system before its reforms
In Japan, the aid administration system was very complicated. Although there were more than ten government agencies involved in Japan’s ODA program, the aid administration had been dominated by three ministries and one agency – the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA), the Ministry of Finance (MOF), the Ministry of International Trade and Industries (MITI) and the Economic Planning Agency (EPA) before the organisational structural reforms took place in 2001. On the other hand, under the ancien regime of Japan’s aid policy, there were three main aid-implementing institutions in Japan. The oldest is Japan’s Export-Import Bank (Eximbank). It played a prominent part in Japan’s economic co-operation during the 1950s. The second institution is the Japan International Co-operation Agency (JICA), which is mainly in charge of technical co-operation projects. The Overseas Economic Co-operation Fund (OECF) provides bilateral loans to developing countries. This paper made an attempt to identify the main characteristics of Japanese aid administrative system before the aid administrative reforms. This is mainly because the ancien regime had strongly influenced and had shaped the forty-years of Japanese aid giving history before the bureaucratic restructuring took place. Nevertheless, despite the recent changes the basic problems of Japanese aid giving-mechanism, such as inter-ministerial conflicts and rivalries, remain same as before.