oda

Japan Press Service Co., Ltd. is the only news agency providing information of progressive, democratic movements in Japan

Japan's ODA must focus on reducing poverty and hunger

In an interview on Asahi Newstar satellite TV aired on March 8, Japanese Communist Party Chair Shii Kazuo said that the government must use the Official Development Assistance (ODA) to effectively reduce the world's poverty and hunger.

He made the remarks in answer to a question regarding the ODA reform proposal submitted by a government panel on overseas economic cooperation. He answered as follows:

The ODA consists of three main programs: yen loans presided by the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC); technical cooperation by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA); and grant aids by the Foreign Ministry. The panel proposed to merge those three programs into a newly-founded institution based on the Koizumi government's administrative reform policy, and it failed to drastically review the fundamental questions underlying Japan's ODA.

The ODA must be reformed to effectively tackle issues of poverty and hunger in the world.

Compared with other major countries, Japan allocates a smaller portion of its ODA budget to measures to solve poverty and hunger. The ODA budget has been used for building infrastructures in foreign countries to benefit Japanese corporations. This must be changed.

The U.N. Millennium Summit stated that 48 billion dollars is needed to halve the world's poverty rate by 2015. Since this amounts to only 5 percent of the annual military expenditure in the world, the Millennium Summit calls for a cut in military budgets to increase humanitarian aid. Japan must take the lead in this effort by cutting its military budget of 5 trillion yen and using the revenue for humanitarian assistance.
- Akahata, March 10, 2006