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 Official Development Assistance (ODA): Altruism or Mercantilism?
No country has offered a greater amount of the Official Development Assistance (ODA) to developing countries than Japan. Typically, ODA takes four different forms: 1) bilateral grants, 2) bilateral loans, 3) technical assistance, and 4) multilateral aid (Furuoka 4). Japan’s ODA provision started in 1954 as the war reparation to Asian countries, and even after the termination of the reparation, the amount continuously increased (Inada 13). In 1991, Japan became the largest ODA donor country in the world. Because ODA has been one of the few ways Japan can show its presence in the international community due to the constitutional limitation on deployment of the Japanese Defense Forces (JDF) (Sunaga 1), Japan’s ODA “remains the cornerstone of Japanese foreign policy” (Thernstrom 1).
Trade, exchange rate, and agricultural pricing policies in Thailand
Thailand is still largely an agricultural country. In 1984, agricultural work was still the main source of earnings for more than 70 percent of the population. For much of the 25 year period covered by this report, government intervention in the prices of rice, maize, and natural rubber was extensive. For these products, intervention took the form of explicit export taxes and restrictive quotas. Sugar, on the other hand, was imported until 1960. For many years prior to that, government policy was to encourage growers and thus achieve self-sufficiency. One conclusion of this study is that the Thai sugar industry would have shrunk dramatically if the government had refrained from intervention. Intervention in the prices of rice and natural rubber had the effect of penalizing farm producers by reducing their output prices. There was, as a consequence a shift of resources towards Thailand's small industrial sector. In 1981, the Thai government lifted its quota restrictions, and liberalized its trade by eliminating its intervention in the maize, rice, sugar and natural rubber markets. Unfortunately for export growers, however, the gradual elimination of intervention was overshadowed by sharp declines in the world prices of Thailand's major agricultural exports.