Message from the Chief Representative

In Bhutan, since 1964, Mr. Keiji Nishioka, who has been engaged in the expansion of Bhutan's agricultural production for many years and received the title of Dasho (Note: Bhutan's peerage meaning "the best person"), has been under the guidance of Mr. Nishioka. Cooperation in the field of agriculture has become a major legacy, and since then, JICA's cooperation have expanded into technical cooperation (including volunteer and grassroots technical cooperation), grant aid, yen loans and JICA Overseas Cooperation Volunteer (JOCV). The quality of bridges constructed by support of JAPAN have been evaluated extremely high and supportive for many Bhutanese living. Such an episode convinced me to realize the great expectations and trust that the Bhutanese government and citizens have for JICA and Japan.

However, Bhutan have recently been in significant transition which might collapse the image of “Land of Happiness”. The outflow of population (esp. younger generation) to outside of Bhutan has been increasing since 2022. The number of drained populations in 2022 was about 17,000 which was equal to almost 2% of total population of the country. Although many younger generations migrated from rural to urban areas for seeking for jobs and wealthy living, high unemployment rate promoted migrate from urban areas to foreign countries.

In order to overcome the above-mentioned situation, I would like to develop our cooperation for activating industries as a whole and creating more employment through strengthening comprehensive value chain covered not only agricultural production but also processing and marketing, and construction of hydro-power plants which have big potential of earning foreign currencies. In local areas, we support digitalization for securing the access of medical services on the one hand, contributes to sustainable local society by capacity development for dealing with local issues by community engagement on the other. Moreover, we consider the necessary supports for monitoring and adaptation of climate changes which brought serious influences on natural environment in Bhutan and significant disasters like landslides and floods.

At present, “Co-creation”, “Innovation”, and “Value Circulation” are key words in JICA. JICA will intermediate between Bhutanese government, various organizations and peoples, and Japanese peoples concerned in organizations, municipalities, and private sectors. We would like to provide more many cases of co-creation of innovative values by those collaboration and circulation of the co-created values between both societies of Bhutan and Japan.

JICA will continue to contribute to solving social and economic issues in Bhutan and improve the relationship between Japan and Bhutan based on the experience and trust gained through cooperation thus far.