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)
Japan as Top Donor: The Challenge of Implementing Software Aid Policy
JAPANESE OFFICIAL DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE (ODA) is undergoing a major J transformation in the post-cold war era. Foreign aid is no longer an instrument of bipolar international competition. However, despite expectations of a peace dividend, total aid flows have not increased. On the contrary, the total supply of foreign aid spent by the twenty-one member states of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) stagnated at about $60 billion per year from 1992 to 1994.1 Recession and increasing United Nations obligations for peacekeeping partly account for this, preventing further growth in ODA expenditures. Amidst these trends, Japan has become the top ODA donor country (see figure 1). As top donor, Japan faces both new opportunities and challenges in this uncertain international environment. A vacuum left by the withdrawal of other major donors offersJapan the opportunity to assume a leadership role in defining a new paradigm for development assistance. The recent promotion of "software aid" can be seen as a strategic shift in Japan's ODA. Software aid is defined as assistance for "human resource development and institutional building "2 in economic and social development. It involves providing information and knowledge, often in forms such as training and policy advice, as opposed to "hardware aid," involving provision of physical construction and equipment. This new policy direction to promote software aid can be seen as an instrument forJapan to express a vision of development assistance in the post-cold war era to the international community.