* This report is made in May 2009 in Japanese and translated into English at June 2010.
Why the Japanese government grant a first priority on foreign policy for pro-whaling!?
- This is the realities of the Japanese foreign aid as "vote buying" on the IWC -
(1) Fisheries ODA ── the symbol of an anachronistic "checkbook diplomacy"
(2) Significant "Aid Inequality" Among Pro-whaling and Non Pro-whaling Countries
Support to the pro-whaling countries amounts to more than 60 billion yen total
Let's get down to cases based on ODA's history and current situation previously discussed.
Japan mainly focuses on priority on national interests and strategy courses, but there are clearly a variety of factors to the framework of the diplomatic foreign policies.
They include historical relationship that combines positive and negative aspects, the geopolitical balance, the degree of trade and investment and human interaction, and Japan's arsenal of natural resources at present time and their prospects, etc.
Given the diversity of each country, complicated relationships have been formed between Japan and other nations on a variety of issues.
Bearing this in mind, when one compares ODA based on a single issue as small as whaling, the difference between the conditions and aid amounts of recipient countries falls away and a clear bias can not be detected. -- These were my thoughts as well.
Nevertheless, the results of the analysis on such issues have been quite startling.
I hereby define whaling aid as premium support to pro-whaling countries, "Whaling Aid", including the aid which is not categorized by fisheries ODA, and would like to elucidate the reality of the situation with visual graphics.
Data indicated here are the latest based on "Official Development Assistance (ODA) Data Book by Country 2008" (Japan International Cooperation Bureau, MOFA, ed.) issued in February this year and an official website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan.
Since some data here could not be found in articles of Foreign Affairs for some reason, they were compiled directly from the World Bank.
"Japan's ODA White Paper 2008" (MOFA, Japanese text only)
"Japan's ODA Data by Country" (MOFA, Japanese text only)
"Data & Statistics" (World Bank, broken link)
The Development Assistance Committee (DAC) - which is within the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and comprised of 22 donor countries, plus the countries within the European Community (EC) - has classified countries in accordance with Gross National Income (GNI).
Within those classified countries, there are 145 countries that currently receive Japan's ODA.
In this article I've divided these 145 recipient countries into two groups: 31 "pro-whaling countries" and 114 "other countries".
Such categories of “pro-whaling countries” and “other countries” are derived from Wikipedia Japan.
South Korea, Iceland, Denmark, Norway, and Russia are outside the DAC list and thus not included here.
Although the Dominican Republic and Solomon Islands, after voting in favor of 2006.s "Declaration of Saint Kitts", shifted from pro-whaling stance to non pro-whaling (refer to the previous chapter and according to Wikipedia; Yet the 2 countries still seem to have the intention to side with the Japanese government at the moment), in order to clearly see the progress of ODA, I classified the two as pro-whaling nations here.
Since the amount and conditions of ODA tends to differ among regions, not only in Japan but elsewhere, in order to conduct comparison, I categorized the above two groups into 6 regions: Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, Oceania and other regions following the classification by Foreign Affairs and DAC.
Morocco is the only pro-whaling country in the Middle East.
"Other Regions" collectively represent the non pro-whaling nations located in Central Asia and Europe.
Although there were many non pro-whaling nations in South Asia, these countries were incorporated into the East Asian countries category since they were also targeted with the aid of ODA Fisheries.
"Other Regions" receives zero donations from ODA fisheries.
<Table 1> indicates pro-whaling countries that receive Japan's aid. Fisheries ODA grant amount is the accumulated annual total between fiscal 1994 and 2008.
Large grants of fisheries ODA have been spent on pro-whaling countries. The total fisheries ODA granted to countries between fiscal 1994 and 2006 amounted to 97.7 billion yen, of which 56.4 billion yen or nearly 60 percent was paid out to pro-whaling countries. The targeted countries and the grant amounts are listed on the 5th page of the following press release material.
"Japanese government's whaling 'shopping list'" (2/2/2007 Greenpeace Japan, Japanese text only, broken link)
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/campaigns/oceans/whaling/endingjapanese-whaling/japan_vote_buying (broken link)
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/revealed-japans-whaling-shoppinglist-405257.html (broken link)
Adding to the above reported information of GPJ in 2007, I listed the 2007 and 2008 updated recipient countries and the corresponding grant amounts of fisheries ODA in <Table 2> obtained from the data of Foreign Ministries. Pro-whaling countries are colored pink. I will explain the red-colored parts later on.
The fisheries ODA total grants in 15 years amounted to 106.5 billion yen, of which 65.2 billion yen was granted to pro-whaling countries. For the last 15 years, the average of the total amount extended to pro-whaling countries represented a little more than 60%, but over the last two years, that amount has increased to more than 70%. Japan's new aid still being given out to the non pro-whaling Dominican Republic makes me wonder if such an act is intended as support for pro-whaling members within the government to leverage a relationship with the country.
<Table 3> lists the ongoing evaluation projects of which the results are expected to be reported in fiscal 2010.
The information source is JICA's home page: Preparatory Survey for Grant Aid (JICA) / English Page.
The five currently ongoing evaluation projects are mostly made up of pro-whaling countries from all over the world.
Antigua and Barbuda, and Gabon have been the targeted countries of fisheries ODA since 2004, and Grenada since 2002.
Right after Mali became a member of IWC in 2004, Japan commenced preliminary evaluation of their eligibility for fisheries ODA.
This was subsequently suspended for some reason.
If the aid is extended, it would be the long-awaited first ODA donation from Japan to Mali.
As discussed in (1), this raises the question as to whether there is any connection among Mali's past participation in 'whaling' watching in the outer coast of Chiba Prefecture, their participation in the IWC annual meeting every June, and the start of Japan's preliminary evaluation.
Cambodia has joined the IWC since 2006, and it will become the first fisheries ODA recipient as a pro-whaling country in East Asia because of Cambodia's active support to Japan's policy at this year's IWC intercessional meeting in Rome, to be held in March.
Features of support whaling Part 1: The amount of fisheries ODA and its ratio
To continue, the following graph shows the statistics that I have compiled separately from GPJ materials. In order to accurately compare with the ODA, I set the period for 10 years from 1998 to 2007, consisting with the OECD/DAC articles in the Foreign Ministry's data book. The units have been converted to US dollars. Such is also to match that of OECD/DAC articles which are in dollar-denominated units based on DAC rate set each year, while Japan's ODA is still in yen-denominated. The countries that have been dropped from ODA support since 1998 are excluded here, although they are still included in the list of GPJ.
<Graph 1> is a bar chart comparing the accumulated 10-year average amount of each country receiving support from fisheries ODA. The numbers in parentheses under the region category indicate the countries which received fisheries ODA with the pro-whaling ones on the left side and the rest on the right side. Looking back at the 10-year period, the total numbers of countries on each side are completely equal with each other; however, if looking at the total amount for each country, the average amount for pro-whaling countries amounts to $17 million USD which is more than double the rest of the countries, who have only received less than averaged 8 million. The difference is particularly large with bulk amount granted to Morocco in the Middle East; the accumulated amount to Morocco has amounted to $37 million USD and by far the highest among the fisheries ODA recipient countries. In second place is Guinea (West Africa) that Japanese foreign minister trust in as the spokesman for Japan, and Dominican Republic is third. There are also still more than double between Latin America and Oceania.
<Graph 2> is a group of pie charts showing the ratio of a10 year accumulated amount of fisheries ODA to the total ODA from Japan for each recipient country.
Blue area shows fisheries ODA. The pro-whaling countries, Latin America and Oceania, increased proportion for fisheries ODA, and especially for Latin America to whom by far granted more than 60%.
A whopping 90 percent of fisheries ODA granted to Saint Kitts and Nevis, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is fisheries ODA.
The ratio of a10 year accumulated amount of Japan's fisheries ODA to the total ODA for each pro-whaling country averaged 9.4%, which is about 10 times more than 0.87% for the rest of the countries, revealing the striking differences between aid to pro-whaling countries and the rest.
This type of fisheries ODA issues has been pointed out by NGO such as GPJ in the past.
Now let's move our focus to the relationship between total ODA including fishery and the pro-whaling countries.
Features of support whaling Part 2: The high rate of donation
There is an indicator called "Grant Element" that is to show the moderation of the condition to receive support. In fact, Japan's ODA Grant Element is very low. As shown in the ODA white paper, Japan is the lowest among DAC 22 countries, and the numbers are also overwhelmingly different from other countries, which is downright humiliating. Currently in many European countries, Grant Element is 100% which means all have been granting aids. By comparison, Japan is the third from the bottom on GNI ratio.
"2008 ODA white paper / Japan international cooperation collection of reference materials Chart 68: DAC countries donation rate" (MOFA, Japanese text only, broken link)
Many cases in which Japan's ODA conditioned the developing countries to repay the obligations have been pointed out for some times. When Japan provides large amount of grant aid to the exceptional assistance while usually Japan attaches conditions to its aid, an implicit message "Normally we get back the fund, but we are giving it out free exceptionally" is attached to the grant. Such is typical case in the past fisheries ODA.
<Graph 3> shows the ratio of grants (grant aid and technical cooperation) among the total cumulative amount of ODA provided to recipients from Japan in the past.
Blue area is the grant aid and the yellow is yen loans. Number in parentheses is number of pro-whaling countries and the rest in each region.
Worldwide part also includes Central Asia and Europe.
The ratio of Middle East, which is only one country Morocco, is reversed exceptionally over grant aid; Africa is almost equal ratio but in the rest regions the ratio of grant aid to the pro-whaling countries greatly exceeded the rest of countries.
Latin America and Oceania shows nearly 100%.
Looking at worldwide, grant aid to non pro-whaling countries shows the half of the ratio, but to pro-whaling countries grant aid reaches almost 90%.
The statistics of East South Asia are noteworthy.
In this region, there are three pro-whaling countries;however, none of them has yet received fisheries ODA.
Instead of providing them fisheries ODA, Japan grants them non-fisheries ODA, a premium level of support relative to that granted other aid recipients.
Such is the disparity in treatment given to supporters vs. non-supporters of Japanese whaling policy.
This also shows the normal characteristic for whaling support that Japan provided its grant aid, not loans, even to countries that relatively have high income.
This issue has raised the overall ratio for grant aids given to pro-whaling countries.
Features of support whaling Part 3: The difference between income groups - Grant aid to rich countries
As noted in the previous section, with regard to aid for the countries with high income levels, if the country is pro-whaling the proportion of grant aid to yen loan is very high.
Conversely, if they are non pro-whaling countries, the proportion of yen loan to grant aid usually becomes higher.
What would be the reason for this?
The grant aid actually is conditional.
In addition to the standard governance issues such as democratization and human rights, which I mentioned in the previous section, there is a principle in which providing grant aid is restricted for low-income countries.
Doesn't it make more common sense to people that grant aid should rather be provided to poorer countries?
For general project of grant aid in 2006, the guideline was to provide aid to countries with GDP that is less than $1,575 USD per person, and for cultural grant aid less than $5,685 USD.
However, only fisheries ODA does not have such guidelines.
This is why expensive grant aid has been indisputably given to high-income countries.
In DAC, the targeted countries for aid are categorized into four groups as measured by GNI per person.
"ODA White Book 2008 / Reference materials regarding Japan's international cooperation groups, categorized by income-base (by DAC) Graph 19)" (MOFA, Japanese text only)
"ODA White Book 2008 List of DAC aid recipient countries and the regions" (MOFA, Japanese text only)
Let's examine the ratio of income groups among pro-whaling countries to other countries on <Graph 4>.
Least Developed Countries (LDC) are defined (by the United Nations) as those with the lowest per capita income in the world.
Low Income Countries (LIC) are countries with a per capita GNI of less than US$ 825.
Lower Middle Income Countries (LMIC) indicates GNI more than $826 USD but less than $3,255 USD per person, and Upper Middle-Income Countries (UMIC) is with more than $3,256 USD but less than $10,065 USD.
These GNI figures are from 2004 survey.
High Income Countries (HIC) characterize the countries with GNI per person that is more than $10,066 USD, and the country receiving Japan's aids falling into such HIC category is only one, Saudi Arabia.
After those countries being labeled with HIC for three years, they would be eliminated from DAC list and supposed to be "graduated" recipient countries.
Comparing to pro-whaling countries and other countries, distinctly unusual trends appeared.
The pro-whaling countries are very disproportionately categorized to two groups of UMIC and LDC.
The pro-whaling nation, Antigua and Barbuda, is categorized as UMIC here; however, the GNI per person in 2006 actually reached $11,050 USD within the HIC group.
There were only two countries among HIC that received Japan's ODA in the same year: Antigua and Barbuda, and Saudi Arabia - which was in the middle of becoming a HIC.
Antigua and Barbuda is currently in the DAC's high income level group, unparalleled in the aid recipient countries, and of course it has nothing to do with whaling (except Japan's fisheries ODA alone).
The main reasons are the promotion of online casino business, a large construction boom of the 2007 Cricket World Cup, plus expansion of offshore business that since 1980's has been mainly for insurance and financial companies tax haven and attracting foreign investors who dislike regulations.
It has been made the recent news that the country was the place where a millionaire was seized by U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in massive tax fraud.
In 2005, their Human Development Index (HDI) was 0.815, and it is the same level as that of Romania, a "graduated" country in Eastern Europe.
Foreign Ministry of Japan considers Antigua and Barbuda as the country with fragile economic base, but substantially they have almost the same levels as those of small developed countries.
For other CARICOM countries that are categorized in UMIC now, Antigua and Barbuda must be the excellent examples to aim at.
However, the country has been hit hard by the worldwide recession, just like pro-whaling country Iceland, despite of its appearance as financeoriented nation, so there is no guarantee that they will not fall into UMIC again.
In the reference articles by Foreign Ministry, there is no detailed information at all regarding Antigua and Barbuda.
One thing clear is that most of the supports the countries receive are represented by Japan's fisheries ODA.
As <Graph 3> shows, already the next project is poised to get the go-ahead.
Even if this country has graduated from DAC list, Japan could favor "the ally" who has full ability to pay IWC membership dues and continues to provide grant aid in a form of technical cooperation for the time being or provide public funds in a form of OA, which is less obvious.
As other high income pro-whaling countries in Africa, there are countries such as Gabon and Nauru.
Gabon is unqualified to receive grant aid because of being categorized exceptionally into UMIC due to oil exports so that the country has been only provided mainly for fisheries ODA and technical cooperation.
Nauru has been proud of its income level in oil producing-countries from the phosphorus exports (though finance is tight due to the depleted phosphate ore).
What is happening in many African countries is that poverty, hunger and environmental destruction are rather worsening while the aids from developed countries have not been fully effective.
Which country might it be distributed more grant aid?
Should it be a country that truly needs a helping hand, or a country that has been becoming a member of developed countries in leaps and bounds because of continued receipt of Japan's large amount of ODA?
Does the current ODA allocation look balanced in the eyes of Japan's citizen?
Features of support whaling Part 4: Preferential debt relief
How about another prominent group of pro-whaling countries, LDC?
The keywords of aid to the low-income countries are Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) and Debt Relief.
HIPC means the countries approved by IMF as one of the poorest countries in the world which are carrying heavy debt.
There are currently 41 countries in 2008, and most of them are African countries beyond doubt.
As mentioned previously, developed countries agreed to take international debt relief measures for HIPC.
This is called expanded HIPC Initiative.
HIPC debtor countries can receive debt relief from DAC countries and from international organizations after presenting the economic and social reform program and actual results achieved to the World Bank / IMF and being examined the ability to repay.
There are two steps.
When the process reaches Decided Point (DP), preliminary relief will be performed, and when it is approved to reach further Completed Point (CP), 90 percent of debt reduction will be achieved.
For the debt relief, there are debt waivers that creditor countries abandon part of accounts as uncollectible, or measures of deferred debt moratorium that may allow stretching repayment terms.
There are also debt-relief measures in the form of reducing non-ODA debts, such as Japan's shouldering the targeted country's debt from international organizations or the country's commercial debts insurance.
Until 2002, Japan has taken the approach of providing free debt relief in the form of grant aid with the same amount.
However, this approach naturally comes with criticism against cancellation of all the debt through grant aid performance.
As for free grants for debt relief, the recipients are required to report how the grant would be or has been used; however, only one out of 20 cases in 2002 under such free grants relief that received such report (total 61 cases).
"About the articles regarding debt relief grant aid" (4/27/2007, MOFA, Japanese text only)
Now, <Graph 5> shows the percentage of debt-forgiveness amount for recipient countries from Japan against the total amount of yen loan.
The period was from 2003 to 2007 when Japan switched the debt relief scheme to the same one used by other DAC countries.
The data source is from Foreign Ministry yet with rough approximation.
Thus, I have confirmed every single number on press releases and summed them up.
Non-ODA debt relief that Japan accepted is not included in the denominator.
The total percentage of blue and light blue areas shows the rate of exemption on the debt amount.
Debt forgiveness for Serbia and Montenegro later separated are excluded here.
"Results of our country's public debt forgiveness (estimated amount)" (MOFA, Japanese text only, broken link)
At first glance, it seems like that pro-whaling countries have lower exemption rate (graphs at left and center).
It is because there are two countries which have higher exemption rates with unusual total exemption amount.
They are Iraq and Nigeria. There's no need to explain about Iraq.
Nigeria is Africa's largest oil exporter; however, it was in the unbelievable situation since the amount of cumulative debt amounted to $40 billion USD.
Therefore, such circumstance prompted a significant debt reduction agreed in 2005 by the developed countries within the Paris Club.
Japan forced Iraq and Nigera to follow detailed repayment schedules, such as splitting a fixed amount into two separate payments.
Neither of these two countries are HIPC.
Except in cases of Iraq and Nigeria (pie chart at right), some characteristics that pro-whaling countries have higher exemption rate have emerged.
The exemption rate is particularly large for Tanzania that Japan overtook the foreign debts accumulated more than twice amount of Japan's ODA loans, and for Cameroon and Benin, Japan overtook 50% more than Japan's ODA loan.
The countries with high rates of non-ODA loans are The United Republic of Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Debt relief to the Democratic Republic of Congo has been brought forward under debt moratorium rather than debt forgiveness.
However, the country has received preferential treatment compared to other countries under Japan's debt relief scheme, such as receiving a 50-67% exemption on the principal loan amount.
It is interesting that the year of Japan's implementing debt relief is very close to the year in which these countries become IWC members; 9 out of 14 pro-whaling countries in Africa have received debt relieves from Japan.
Many of these debt relieves were implemented in 2004 under an agreement with Paris Club signed in 2002, yet the years of African countries' becoming IWC members are concentrated around 2005.
2005 was the perfect year to gather votes for General Assembly in St. Kitts, and the person in charge at Fishery Agency could not have asked for the best chance better than that.
As noted above, Tanzania which received 63.7 billion yen under incredible debt forgiveness measures in 2007 had joined the IWC the next year in 2008.
It is very easy to comprehend such coincidence.
These are some lists of examples regarding the better treatment on debt relief implemented to pro-whaling countries comparing to other countries.
One is Togo that had received 1.79 billion yen of debt relief in 2004.
The 16% exemption rate itself is low figure compared to other countries.
However, Togo has not yet cleared a condition for debt relief DP.
Besides Togo, there was only one other country out of 8 HIPC countries that have not reached DP, to which Japan has provided debt forgiveness, and that was Nepal in South Asia (2004).
For Togo, the additional 4.2 billion JP yen of the moratorium measures was implemented in 2008.
There was another pro-whaling country that had not been qualified for DP - Cote d'Ivoire.
The GNI per person of Cote d'Ivoire was $880 USD which was higher than other HIPC.
In addition, the country is politically unstable, and thus bonus could not have been so easily approved.
Still, 4.2 billion yen and 1.5 billion yen worth of debt relief in the form of carrying-over, and moratoriums are implemented to this country in 2003.
This also happened in the year before when Cote d'Ivoire joined IWC.
As long as countries make IWC pilgrimage tidily, the debt relief measures including debt forgiveness might be implemented.
Another case was Laos that was the only pro-whaling country outside Africa receiving debt forgiveness.
The exemption amount was also about 600 million yen, at about 3 percent waiver rate, while the numbers were small.
In fact, Laos was HIPC before reaching DP, but in 2005 the country gave up on their chance to receive the implementation of expanded HIPC Initiative (In order to be approved as HIPC, interested states must agree unanimously.)
Excluding Laos and Togo, the exemption rates for debt relief to the rest of the pro-whaling countries are even up about 68%, and the amount that could be calculated as equivalent to nearly two-third of the debt (excluding interest) was exempted.
The figure has shown that the pro-whaling countries are prioritized to be implemented debt relief even under agreement on debt relief summit.
Features of support whaling Part 5: Self-centered aid without adjustment and coordination
As previously mentioned in "ODA's present status", close collaborations between each individual donor are performed nowadays in order to ensure aid effectiveness, fairness and righteousness. The importance of aid adjustment and coordination are currently emphasized also by Japan's Foreign Ministry in their white paper, or data book, and so on. For example, the following is stipulated in the data book of 2008 "Approach of ODA for African regions" (389 pages).
Upon coordinating the implementation to Africa, it is necessary to make detailed consideration on each stage from uncovering projects to final implementation for adequate follow-up. To do so, it is important to promote cooperation as much as possible within European countries that have close relations with Africa historically and the international organizations networks in each African countries. With that perspective, using the basic philosophy introduced by the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) of ownership and partnership Japan has been striving to extend consistent aid in many African countries by collaborating with other aid donors under the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP).
Generally speaking, nobody would have any objection to the above scheme.
However, the one that is going against the flow of such international aid coordination is Japan's support whaling diplomacy that has Fishery Agency as a pillar.
In Japan's data book there is a section with reports of the ODA results for each country in Chapter 4: "The Current State of Aid Coordination and Japan's Involvement in Interested Countries".
This chapter contains information regarding the regulations and cooperation trends between the recipient country and donors as well as an outline of Japan's involvement (including possible future involvement).
In some cases more than half a page was used for this chapter.
In some countries' pages such chapters were skipped.
That probably means there is nothing in particular to remark upon - in other words, it means that the country hasn't had any aid coordination with Japan.
There are countries written about in the chapter using only one line, such as "Japan also joins accordingly." (Uzbekistan); "There is no major movement." (Iran, Uruguay, and Chile); "There is no aid coordination (for various reasons)." (Somalia and Cuba).
It could mean that Japan pays so little attention to other donors' activities that they miss out updated information about those recipient countries.
One thing is for sure, Japan is not even participating in the aid coordination.
In total, 51 countries in the data book did not have a chapter regarding aid coordination.
Fifteen of these countries are pro-whaling.
That's roughly half the number of total pro-whaling countries.
For other pro-whaling countries, the statements are like "There is no aid coordination led by major donors." (Morocco), "The aid coordination has not been put into effect except educational field." (Guinea), "Since September 2002 crisis for ivory, there is no aid coordination at all among major donors." (Cote d'Ivoire), "There is no noticeable movement of aid coordination. Palau has not formulated a PRSP." (Palau) "An active and aid coordination have not been made, however, the cooperation from other donors such as the U.S. should be brought into perspective as necessary." (Marshall) and so on, and that means two-thirds of the pro-whaling countries do not make any aid adjustment and coordination at all, or rather very behind.
In above mentioned countries, the individual donors are making separate movements and not working together with one another.
In other words, such attitude of segregation in these countries creates an environment that allows Japan to proceed easily with giving ODA for their political "use", and the words "political use" is even said publicly by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries bureaucrats and the congressional members.
Here is the concrete instance. Guinea, in pro-whaling countries, is a strong backup country Japan relies on as "a Japan's spokesman in West Africa for IWC".
As previously mentioned, Japan has provided close to $28 million USD in fisheries ODA to Guinea, putting it in second place among Japan's fisheries ODA recipient countries, and has paid out 7 times in the last 15 years - which is considered very frequent.
Guinea is considered to be a prime example for other African countries to follow on how to receive large amounts of free aid from Japan.
Some strange thing is written in the "Notes" on the page 477 of Data Book for the page of Guinea.
Among the many donors working in Guinea, the people in Guinea has strong faith in Japan thanks to the quality and the efficiency of the aid, and especially in recent years the expectation of Guinea government for Japan's aid is also high while the amount of the aid from EU and the World Bank have both been lessening. On the other hand, the government's chronic budget shortfalls leading to lower administrative implementation capacity has deteriorated the aid efficiency. In such circumstances, while narrowing down the prioritized items that would need aid and skillfully combining a variety of schemes that Japan retains, it is important to ensure the certain beneficial effects.
It is easy to understand that the government of Guinea counts on Japan's aid substantially, but this statement sounds as if Japan is only interested in increasing their own presence.
If there is a problem about the quality and effectiveness of the aid from DAC countries that provide more aid amount to Guinea than Japan does, such as the U.S. and France, it should be proper way for Japan to activate the aid coordination in the same way to other aid model countries in Africa and to provide those donor countries and Guinea information about the efficient aid in the process.
Guinea, however, seems to need rather financial support.
Additionally, this context sounds like "The country considers that Japan's aid effectiveness is high, but the fact is low (compared to the aid to other countries)" which is quite contradicted statement.
This page of Guinea must be written almost certainly by those dispatched from Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.
Meanwhile, Solomon in Oceania that switched the position to the opposition from pro-whaling is becoming an advanced aid model country with "The information among donors are shared and views are exchanged actively.
NZ has been providing sectorial financial aid. Australia and the World Bank brought in SWAPs to the insurance field." Of course, Japan is not 'left out' of scheme and "is making coordination with other donors".
This should be the proper way to be the aid coordination.
Regarding to the waiver of liability discussed in the preceding section, there are countries except pro-whaling countries, such as Ghana, Zambia and Honduras, that have a high proportion of the ratio and the amount of debt relief.
In the aid to these countries, the movement of active aid coordination among DAC countries that keep pace brisk can be seen.
In contrast, as in the case of Togo and Laos, when Japan implements the debt relief on its own without following Expanded HIPC Initiative, not the Paris Club agreement but quite old resolution of 1978 United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) is cited as a political cover.
(3) leading to (only in Japanese)
Translated and Revised byChoices for Tomorrow (CFT)
Tweet