Monitoring Japan's aid commitments.

摘要

It was a familiar story of Japanese largesse. "A golden chance for Vietnam's economy" was how one newspaper summed up the aid package secured by the Vietnamese prime minister, Nguyen Tan Dung, during a recent visit to Tokyo.Japan is, after all, Vietnam's largest donorof official development assistance (ODA), providing more than 100 billion yen in fiscal 2005.The Vietnamese are nottheonly beneficiaries of Japan's postwar generosity. Last year, Tokyo gave USdollar13.1 billion in aid tothe developing world, second only to the USA, which replaced Japan as the world's top aid donor in 2001. Japan provides 19-5% of the UN's budget, compared with Germany's 8.7% and the UK's 6.1%.Between 1954 and 2003, Japan provided a total of USdollar221 billion in aid and was the world's biggest ODA giver for 9 years in a row from 1991.But closer scrutiny of Japan's overseas development assistance-including its three-pronged strategy of soft yen loans, grants in aid, and technical cooperation-suggests it might not be all itis made out to be.