Japan to Resume ODA for Vietnam
Japan has a plan to resume official development assistances (ODA) to Vietnam after the Asean country agreed to new anticorruption measures, Japan’s JIJI Press said, quoting the foreign country’s Foreign Ministry.
JIJI Press said that Tokyo will resume granting ODA in yen to Vietnam after the new measures were agreed by the two sides.
Under the newly-reached deal, Vietnam will set up a third party to oversee the implementation of Japanese ODA projects in Vietnam, Vietnam News Agency said.
The Japanese government decided to halt new ODA for Vietnam last year after Japan’s Pacific Consultants International (PCI)-related corruption scandal was unveiled in August, the agency said.
Two months after the scandal, Vietnam and Japan agreed to set up a joint committee for corruption prevention and fight in mid-October, which is expected to release the first report on the scandal next month.
Japan is the biggest ODA provider for Vietnam, holding US$1.1 billion out of US$5.4 billion committed by donors for the fiscal year of 2008.
At the CG meeting held in last December, donors pledged US$5.014 billion in ODA for Vietnam this fiscal year, down 7.2 per cent on year due to Japan’s ODA halted.
By the end of August last year, Japan had invested into more than 1,000 projects in Vietnam with a combined registered capital of US$16.9 billion, ranking the second among 81 countries and territories investing in Vietnam, behind Taiwan.
Japan is among biggest buyers of Vietnamese goods. Vietnam reported a trade surplus of US$200 million with Japan out of the two-way trade of US$14.2 billion in Jan-Oct last year. (VNA, Thanh Nien)
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