By Judith Ugwumadu | 18 July 2014
Japan’s public expenditure on official development aid grew more than a third between 2012 and 2013 but the government needs to increase its focus on results and transparency, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC) published its review of the world’s third largest economy yesterday and revealed that Japan’s net ODA was $11.8bn last year. A debt cancellation for Myanmar and increases in bilateral lending were the main reasons for the rise in spending.
As a result, Japan moved up one place to become the fourth largest DAC donor, by increasing its public expenditure on international aid, growing it from 0.17% of gross national income to 0.23% in 2013. However, Japan’s commitment to spending 0.7% of its national income on international aid remains well below target.
The country has since launched a series of new global initiatives in areas such as health, climate change, finance, women’s empowerment and disaster risk reduction, the OECD report noted as it hailed Japan for increasingly exerting global leadership and influence.
But the review highlighted that Japan’s development policy lacked coherence. Monitoring and reporting on the success of development programmes was not done effectively.
DAC chair Erik Solheim said: ‘In the sixtieth anniversary of its development assistance, Japan can take pride in becoming the fourth largest DAC donor and an increasingly effective partner in development.
‘Japan will be better able to demonstrate its achievements by bringing a sharper results focus to all its work, including the ability to show its co-operation is supporting efforts to reduce in the many countries in which it works.’
The DAC recommended that Japan continues to scale up its support to countries where assistance is most needed, including least developed countries, bearing in mind international commitments.
It also issued recommendations for measuring and monitoring the impact of Japan’s development programmes on poverty reduction.
Japan should also take a more strategic, better resourced and targeted approach to communication to build better understanding and support among the Japanese people for development assistance.
‘And while the review found increased efforts to improve transparency, Japan will need to do more if it is to comply with transparency commitment by 2015,’ the report concluded.
