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2 More proof of the Rising Sun's
eclipse By Hisane Masaki
TOKYO - Foreign policymakers in the Land
of the Rising Sun would be on Cloud 9 if they
could turn the clock back just a few years and
bask in the glow of seeing their nation vying for
the status as the world's top aid donor again.
According to a recent report by the
Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation
and Development, Japan slipped to third place
among the world's 22 major foreign-aid donors in
2006, only five years after being replaced by the
United States as the world's
largest aid donor in 2001,
the slot it had kept for 10 years.
In
2006, the US was by far the biggest aid donor,
extending $22.7 billion, followed by Britain with
$12.6 billion, Japan with $11.6 billion, France
with $10.4 billion and Germany with $10.3 billion.
It is the first time that Japan has ranked third
or lower since 1982. Japan is widely expected to
slide further into fifth place around 2010,
trailing Germany and France.
The net
amount of Japan's overseas development assistance
(ODA) disbursements in 2006, which excludes yen
loans repaid by developing countries, was down
11.7% in nominal terms and 9.6% in real terms from
2005. This was largely due to reductions in
humanitarian relief aid after large expenditures
for the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2005 as well as
smaller amounts of debt cancellations, especially
for Iraq.
Since the terrorist attacks in
the United States on September 11, 2001, the US
and European nations have recognized anew the
importance of addressing such issues as poverty,
which can be a hotbed of terrorism. They have
overcome the "aid fatigue" they suffered in the
1990s and sharply increased their ODA spending.
Japan has bucked the international trend,
however. The nation has continued to cut back on
its ODA budget in the past decade as part of
efforts to nurse its ailing finances back to
health. Japan's fiscal condition is the worst
among major industrialized countries. The Foreign
Ministry's desperate calls for an end to the cycle
of ODA budget cuts have been drowned out by much
louder clamors for belt-tightening, especially
from the Finance Ministry.
For Japan,
sliding down the rankings of aid donors is not
just a matter of national pride but a serious
issue that has already begun to cast a dark cloud
over the nation's international clout. For the
world's second-biggest economy, whose military
contributions to ensuring global peace have been
strictly constrained by the postwar pacifist
constitution, ODA has been the most powerful
foreign-policy tool for playing a role
commensurate with its economic power.
Highly alarmed by a possible further
erosion of Japan's international clout, voices
calling for stemming a further decline in the
nation's ODA budget are growing louder these days
within Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's Liberal
Democratic Party-led coalition. A special ODA
committee of the House of Councilors adopted a
seven-point resolution last month that includes a
call for increasing the nation's ODA budget.
In its recommendations on Japan's ODA
policy, issued in May, Nippon Keidanren (Japan
Business Federation), the nation's most powerful
business lobby, criticized the 2006 report by the
government's Council on Economic and Fiscal
Policy, saying it "gave the international
community the impression that Japan's ODA budget
was moving backward, and this left a black mark in
Japan's foreign policy".
China's emergence
as an aid donor has also added fuel to those calls
for a reversal of the shrinking Japanese ODA
budget. Japan is locked in an increasingly
intensifying rivalry with China, a rapidly
ascendant economic as well as military power, for
economic influence in Asia and energy resources,
such as oil and gas, in various parts of the
world.
It is not known exactly how much
aid China, already the world's fourth-biggest
economy in terms of gross domestic product, is
providing to other developing countries, but is
widely believed to be already a larger aid donor
than some other regular contributors. Chinese
President Hu Jintao told the Forum on China-Africa
Cooperation that China would double its aid to
Africa from its 2006 level by 2009, although he
gave no figures.
Hu also promised the
provision of $3 billion in preferential loans and
$2 billion in export credits over three years and
the establishment of a $5 billion fund to
encourage Chinese investment in Africa. These
pledges are part of Beijing's strenuous efforts to
strengthen ties with Africa as it continues its
aggressive search for new oil and other energy
sources and export markets. More recently, China
hosted the annual board meeting of the African
Development Bank in Shanghai in May. It was the
bank's first such meeting in Asia.
However, Japan and the other donor nations
are increasingly critical of China's aid policy,
especially in Africa, saying it lacks
transparency. Oxfam Japan says, however, "Japan's
expressed concerns over Chinese aid in Africa do
not sound particularly credible with its own aid
contribution falling and promises broken."
Rich nations should do more Critics
say the major aid donors should do more. The
$103.9 billion spending on ODA in 2006 was less
than a tenth of global
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