From Africa Recovery, Vol.11#2 (October 1997), Briefs page

Japan's aid cuts to hit Africa and some UN agencies also

Japan's official development assistance (ODA) recovered this year after a sharp fall in 1996, but it is set to drop by 10 per cent in fiscal year 1998, with further cuts until 2001. The fall of the yen against the dollar could mean a 25 per cent cut in real terms. "I'm afraid Africa will become a major victim of our aid cuts," Mr. Morihisa Aoki, Japan's new ambassador for African conflicts, told the London Financial Times. Sub-Saharan Africa got 11.6 per cent of Japan's ODA last year. Aid will also "have to be much more selective," Mr. Aoki added.

The planned cuts follow an ODApolicy review by a committee appointed by Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto. UN agencies may also be hit if the cuts are approved in December when Japan's Diet votes on the national budget.

Japan's attitude to humanitarian issues may be "questioned internationally," and other countries could also be "lured" into cutting their own contributions, warned Mrs. Sadako Ogata, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, in a letter she wrote in July to Mr. Hashimoto. "We keep hoping that the threatened cuts will not be carried out," added Mr. Manzoor Ahmed, head of the office Tokyo of UNICEF,which faces a cut of nearly 40 per cent in Japanese funding, Inter Press Service reports.

Japan is the world's biggest donor country in volume, but it is second to last among major donors in terms of ODAas a proportion of gross national product (GNP). Its ratio of ODA to GNP fell from 0.28 per cent in 1995 to 0.20 in 1996, the biggest decline among major donors. But this was still ahead of the US, which stayed in last place with a ratio of 0.12 per cent, up from 0.10 per cent in 1995.

In US dollar terms, Japanese ODA fell some 35 per cent in 1996 to $9.6 bn, but is projected to rise to about $13 bn this year. Reasons for the decrease last year include large repayments on ODA loans, cuts in multilateral aid and depreciation of the yen, says The Reality of Aid, 1997-1998, a major review of ODA by non-governmental organizations (NGOs). But with the biggest budget deficit among major donor countries, Japan has been reviewing all spending, including foreign aid. Defenders of foreign aid, including NGOs, are lobbying against the cuts, and the government itself says that aid, investment and trade are a "trinity" in accelerating progress in developing countries.

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