Deputy Director Hiroshi Kato Speaks about JICA's Experience in International Aid at the First Asia Development Cooperation Meeting

The first Asian Development Cooperation Meeting (ADCM) (*1), co-hosted by the Ministry of Strategy and Finance of Korea, the Export-Import Bank of Korea, and the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy (KIEP), was held in Seoul from November 18 to 19. Discussions at the meeting focused on topics that included development aid policies in Asia, South-South cooperation, and response to global agendas. The attendees included officials from the Korean and Japanese governments, the finance ministries of Asian countries (such as China, India, and Thailand), the World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank (ADB). From JICA-RI, deputy director Hiroshi Kato participated in the conference to share JICA's efforts in these areas.

In the session titled "Role of Asian Donors and MDBs in South-South Cooperation," Kato introduced JICA's efforts in South-South cooperation with particular emphasis on an agricultural triangular cooperation program that was officially agreed last year in Mozambique by Japan, Brazil, and Mozambique. He presented JICA's plans to apply the experience it gained from the successful "Japan-Brazil Agricultural Development Cooperation Program”(*2) to launch a tropical savanna agricultural development program in Mozambique, and ultimately boost agricultural development throughout Africa's tropical savanna zones. His presentation was received positively by the panelists and many of the participants at the meeting.

Other speakers in the session presented reviews of the status and challenges of South-South cooperation as well, including representatives from the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) of the Philippines, the Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI) of Vietnam, and related international organizations.

The meeting produced a shared awareness among ministerial officials on issues such as: 1) sharing ODA policies between Asian donor countries, 2) the role of multilateral development banks (MDBs) and donor countries in South-South cooperation, and 3) strengthening regional development cooperation systems for tackling development agendas.

(*1) ADCM is a forum for Asian donor countries to share experiences useful for aid improvement, and discuss the future direction of development assistance in Asia as preparation for the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness to be held in Busan in November 2011. It also seeks to examine a new ODA model for Asia which will be mutually beneficial for both recipient and donor countries and boost economic growth in recipient countries.

(*2) The "Japan-Brazil Agricultural Development Cooperation Program" is an agricultural development cooperation program launched in the 1970s and continued for two decades by JICA and the government of Brazil. The project transformed the strongly acidic, barren and semi-desert soils of the Cerrado area into a major agricultural region, and contributed to easing the world's tight food supply and demand through boosting agricultural production. Research has begun on utilizing this success to promote future agricultural development projects.