Las “psicosis afectivas” clásicas

In the 1980s overall emphasis in Japan’s aid program was on achieving continuing growth in Japan’s ODA budget; that is, meeting quantitative targets. The first aid doubling plan was completed in 1980. The Japanese government then proceeded with a second medium-term plan, which aimed to double ODA disbursement in the period 1981 to 1985. A third aid doubling plan, for the period 1986 to 1992, was realised by 1988. This was mainly due to the rapid appreciation of the yen after 1985. The government then announced a fourth medium-term plan, for the period 1989 to 1992. See Table 2.1.41

The growth in Japan’s aid flows coincided with deepening trade friction between Japan and the US. There was greater emphasis in official rhetoric on burden-sharing and on Japan’s ‘international obligations and responsibilities’. Increasingly in the 1980s, the idea of ‘burden-sharing’ acquired a less military or geo-political orientation, and more of an economic focus.42 The clearest example of this was Prime Minister Takeshita’s International Cooperation Initiative (ICI) of 1988. There were three pillars of the ICI: ‘cooperation towards achievement of peace, expansion of ODA and promotion of

40 Sueo Sudo, ‘The Road to Becoming a Regional Leader’, pp.37-8.

41 These increases were mainly funded by government borrowing o f private sector funds; that is from the Fiscal Investment and Loan Program, which is based on funds invested in the postal savings system. 42 There were some exceptions to this trend, such as the Kuranari Doctrine on relations with the Pacific islands. This is explored in Chapter 6.

international cultural exchange’.43 One month after the announcement of the ICI, and just prior to the G7 Economic Summit, the Japanese government announced its fourth

medium-term target. The practice of announcing ODA doubling plans at G-7 summits continued in the 1990s.

Table 2.1 Japan’s ODA Performance 1977-93 (net disbursements)

ODA (Smillion) Increase % ODA/ GNP % DAC Average % ODA (Yen billion) Increase % 1977 1,424 28.9 0.21 0.33 3,825 16.7 1978 2,215 55.5 0.23 0.35 4,663 21.9 1979 2,638 19.1 0.26 0.35 5,781 24.0 1980 3,304 25.3 0.31 0.37 7,491 29.6 1981 3,171 -4.0 0.27 0.35 6,993 -6.6 1982 3,023 -4.7 0.28 0.38 7,529 7.7 1983 3,761 24.4 0.32 0.36 8,933 18.6 1984 4,319 14.8 0.34 0.36 10,258 14.8 1985 3,797 -12.1 0.29 0.35 9,057 -11.7 1986 5,634 48.4 0.29 0.35 9,495 4.8 1987 7,454 32.3 0.31 0.35 10,782 13.5 1988 9,134 22.5 0.32 0.36 11,705 8.6 1989 8,965 -1.8 0.31 0.34 12,368 5.7 1990 9,069 1.2 0.31 0.35 13,131 6.2 1991 10,952 20.8 0.32 0.34 14,731 12.2 1992 11,151 1.8 0.30 0.33 14,125 4.1 1993 11,259 15.2 0.26 0.29 12,517 1.1

Note: The lines separate the five ODA plans or medium-term targets.

Source: Compiled from data in MOFA, Japan s Official Development Assistance Annual Reports,

1989, 1993, 1994.

Japan’s aid polices were an increasingly important part of its management o f relations with its trading partners. This imperative also influenced the announcements between 1987 and 1989 o f additional commitments to fund debt relief measures and structural adjustment programs (the Japanese Recycling Plan). These initiatives (which overlapped to some extent with the fourth medium-term target) aimed to encourage recycling of Japan’s trade and current account surplus. They also served to augment Japan’s contributions to multilateral lending institutions.44

43 MOFA, Japan’s Official Development Assistance 1990 Annual Report, p.6.

44 Terutomo Ozawa, Recycling Japan s Surpluses for Developing Countries, Development Centre for the OECD, Paris, 1989. See also Torn Yanagihara and Anne Emig, ‘An Overview of Japan’s Foreign Aid’.

As long as the emphasis was on quantitative improvement, burden-sharing did not necessarily conflict with or displace the primacy of economic interests in ODA that had underpinned ‘economic cooperation’. Foreign policy rationales (such as those articulated by Prime Minister Takeshita) accommodated longstanding economic goals. The recycling plan, for example, supported increased flows to Southeast Asia. This coincided with a MITI initiative in 1987, called the New Asian Industries Development (AID) plan. It was conceived in response to the rapid rise in the value of the yen after 1985 and aimed to assist Japan’s smaller export oriented industries relocate to developing countries in Southeast Asia and export back to Japan. This was both to facilitate restructuring of the Japanese economy and mitigate pressures on Japan to reduce its trade surplus. Aid (yen loans and technical cooperation) would help build the necessary infrastructure in these countries to support Japanese investments.45

Nevertheless, the political and economic rationale of burden-sharing did

introduce an aid agenda that competed with the specific interests and issues inherent in Japan’s relations with recipients. This had the potential for creating tensions in Japan’s aid policies.46 The problem of reconciling political and economic objectives also became more acute in the 1980s in the context of promoting qualitative change. Trading partners (the US in particular) linked procurement policies and practices of Japan’s ODA to debates about the ‘closed’ nature of the Japanese market. Although de jure tying of yen loans had gradually been reduced since 1978 (in 1989, 78 per cent of bilateral aid was untied), critics argued that the low share of projects carried out by Western firms attested to de fa cto tying.47 This led to pressure on Japan to untie the engineering services and consulting component of yen loans, a process that began on a case by case basis in 1988. By allowing foreign consultants access, it was anticipated that the bidding process for project implementation would be opened up, as Japanese firms would not

45 See Danny Unger, ‘Japan’s Capital Exports: Molding East A sia’, in Danny Unger and Paul

Blackburn (eds), Japan s Emerging Global Role, Lynne Rienner Publishers, Boulder and London, 1993; and David Arase, ‘US and ASEAN Perceptions o f Japan’s Role in the Asian-Pacific’, in Harry H. Kendall and Clara Joewana (eds), The US, Japan and ASEAN, Institute of East Asian Studies, Berkeley, CA, 1991.

46 This is an aspect that is explored in more detail in the following study o f Japan’s ODA to the Pacific island countries. The recent case of suspending aid to Iran illustrates this conflict. The US, accusing Iran of supporting terrorism, had urged Japan to suspend aid to Iran. Japan was reluctant to impose an aid suspension ‘without p roof o f Iran’s involvement in terrorism. It was also claimed that to suspend aid would mean the waste o f an earlier loan to Iran (the first stage o f a hydro-electric project). Iran also supplied almost 10 per cent o f Japan’s oil. Japan subsequently announced it would ‘delay’ the second installment of the loan to Iran. See Nikkei Telecom Service, 7 March, 1995; Far Eastern Economic Review, 11 May, 1995, p.13.

47 Margee Ensign, Doing Good or Doing Well? Japan’s Foreign Aid Program, Columbia University Press, New York, 1992. For a more favourable assessment of Japan’s performance as an aid donor in the context o f US-Japan relations, see Shafiqul Islam, ‘Beyond Burden-sharing: Economics and Politics of Japan’s Foreign A id’, in Shafiqul Islam (ed.), Yen for Development: Japanese Foreign Aid and the Politics of Burden-sharing, Council on Foreign Relations, New York, 1991.

have the advantage of tailoring project specifications to areas where they were most competitive.48

Other issues that concerned the international donor community included the relatively low ODA/GNP ratio (by the end of the decade this was 0.31 per cent, with a DAC average of 0.35 per cent) the grant element of total ODA commitments (76.3 per cent as compared to the recommended norm of 86 per cent) and the share of grants in total ODA (which was seen as the main factor accounting for the above anomaly, 44 per cent compared to a DAC average of 76 per cent). There was also pressure to reduce the proportion of aid provided for infrastructure development, which was seen to facilitate opportunities for Japanese firms to profit from ODA.49 The share of aid for infrastructure was 63 per cent of Japan’s total bilateral ODA in 1987. This dropped to 50 per cent in

1989 and to 41 per cent in 1991.50

The Japanese government’s response to these criticisms was to institute measured and incremental reform. Apart from increasing the untied portion of its yen loans, it increased the amount of grant aid (from $1.7 billion in 1986 to $3 billion in 1990). Policy innovations designed to make grant aid more responsive to the needs of recipients were also introduced (for example the Small-Scale Grant Assistance scheme in 1989).51 High level government and private sector bodies (the Administrative Reform Council and Keidanren) also devised and backed measures to streamline and centralise aid policy making, as well as to clarify aid principles and develop country and region specific aid policies.

But whole-scale change, involving redistribution of decision making power as well as reforming procedures and guidelines, was largely blocked by bureaucratic resistance and inertia. The dilemma confronting these reform-oriented initiatives is that they challenge the administrative and political foundations upon which Japan’s ODA has been built and managed.52 As Orr concludes, definition of ‘quality of assistance involves

48 Susan J. Pharr, ‘Japanese Aid in the New World Order’, in Craig C. Garby and Mary Brown Bullock, (eds), Japan, A New Kind o f Superpower?, The Woodrow Wilson Center Press, Washington DC, 1994. 49 Development Assistance Committee, Aid Review 1990/91: Report by the Secretariat and Questions for the Review o f Japan, OECD, Paris, 1991.

50 MOFA, Japan s Official Development Assistance, Annual Reports, 1988,1990, 1992.

51 The Small-Scale Grant Assistance scheme began in 1989. There were 95 projects in 1989 (294 million yen) and by 1992, 227 projects (700 million yen). Another innovation was the provision o f non project-tied grant aid to support structural adjustment. The first package o f $500 million was extended to countries o f sub-Saharan Africa between 1987 and 1989. This was channelled through third party agencies (the UNDP and British Crown Agents). In 1992,16 small-scale grant projects were provided to the Pacific island countries. MOFA, Japan s Official Development Assistance 1993 Annual Report, p. 114.

52 These refer to the complex political balance within the aid bureaucracy between the various policy makers. They also refer to the integration o f the private sector in Japan’s ‘economic cooperation’. See David Arase, ‘Public-Private Sector Interest Coordination in Japan’s O D A ’. For details o f aid reform,

difficult policy choices inimical to the conflicting interests’ of the various ministries involved in aid decision making.53

Underlying the resistance to administrative reform was the absence of adequate measures to address institutional and staffing weaknesses in Japan’s aid bureaucracy. The increase in staff numbers did not keep pace with the growth in the aid disbursements. This was largely a reflection of the Japanese government’s fiscal austerity policies in the

1980s, which placed strict limits on the growth of ‘non-obligatory expenditures’.54 In the 1980s a principal challenge for Japan’s ODA program therefore was adapting administrative procedures and institutions governing ODA to the reality of Japan’s burgeoning aid budget and the expectations of donors and recipients. Policy change continued to be a result of external pressures, especially from the international donor community and key trading partners. This reflected an apparent paradox: the more Japan’s aid budget grew, the more pressure there was from international aid fora, other donors and recipients for Japan to reform its policies and to improve the quality of aid; in other words, the more visible Japan became as an aid donor, the more criticism it

attracted.

This had domestic dimensions as well. As the aid budget grew, public scrutiny of aid policy also increased. On the one hand, critics sought to expose corrupt, wasteful and socially and environmentally destructive aid practices; on the other, they pressured against political use of aid.55 The Japanese government became increasingly sensitive to public perceptions of ODA, as evidenced in the new efforts, especially by MOFA, to

‘promote understanding of OD A ’ in Japan.56 This was due in part to the fact that MOF was resistant to increasing the aid budget, and any public criticism of ODA increased its reservations about ‘wasting tax payer’s m oney’.

There was an underlying dilemma for the government, moreover, in that while the international community expected Japan to play a more political role in world affairs (including the political use of ODA), economic ministries and the private sector continued to emphasise their respective trade, investment and resource interests as motivations and objectives for ODA. Thus, to encompass this ‘diversity’, official MOFA reports continued to refer to vague or general principles and ideas as Japan’s ‘basic

see Alan Rix, Japan’s Foreign Aid Challenge: Policy Reform and Aid Leadership, Routledge, London and New York, 1993.

53 Robert M. Orr Jr., The Emergence of Japan s Foreign Aid Power, p.138. 54 Shinji Takagi, From Recipient to Donor, p.31.

55 See, for example, Yoshinori Murai (ed.), Kensho Nippon no ODA, Gakuyo Shobo, Tokyo, 1992; also

AMPO, Japan-Asia Quarterly Review, Vol.21, N o .4 ,1989 (Special Issue on Japan’s ODA).

56 In 1987 the Japanese government adopted the recommendation o f a study group to designate one day each year (6 October) to ‘International Cooperation D ay’ as a way o f raising awareness o f ODA in Japan.

philosophy’ of ODA. These included ‘humanitarian considerations, interdependence, environmental considerations and support for self help’.57 This vagueness only fed the confusion at the international level about what exactly Japan’s ODA program was aimed at.58

In the 1990s the Japanese government attempted to resolve some of these dilemmas and tensions in its ODA by introducing new initiatives. The effect of these measures, however, has been more cosmetic than substantive. In fact it may argued that the aim of these innovations has been to avoid major adjustment in Japan’s ODA, especially at the administrative level.