| | Japan: the Emerging 'Giant' of International Aid During the latter part of the 1970s, Japanese official development aid increased from $1.4bn in 1977 to $3.3bn in 1980. Dennis Yasutomo has observed that during the first half of the 1980s, 'in an era of fiscal austerity and zero-growth national budgets, when the Japanese government forces belt-tightening measures on its own people, one budget item has been extended special treatment and exempted from severe spending cuts - money for foreign aid' (Yasumoto, 1986:1). In 1981, the Suzuki Zenko cabinet pledged another doubling in five years. The fiscal austerity policy, foreign exchange rate fluctuations, recipient nation's absorptive capacities, and other problems prevented Japan from fulfilling the aid doubling pledge. Even so, Japan's performance during the first half of the 1980s catapulted it to the status of the world's third largest donor by 1983 and to number two (displacing France) by 1984. Throughout the first half of the decade, the rate of growth in expenditure on foreign aid varied between 9 and 13% a year. Overall, between 1981 and 1985, Japanese ODA enjoyed a 31.5% increase. In mid-1984, Japan became the second largest supplier of funds to the World Bank. By 1991, Japan had become the world's largest aid 'donor' - a position it was to maintain over the next five years. |
