Pakistan is likely to lose a significant portion of Japanese assistance for its development projects after the Japanese Cabinet passed an emergency budget worth $50bn to help finance reconstruction and rehabilitation efforts in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami that hit the country on March 11.
In this current situation, the office of Japan International Co-operation Agency (JICA) in Pakistan is not sure whether the pledged assistance for Pakistan will be affected. However, heated debates are ongoing in the Japanese parliament whether to cut down the size of JICA's allocation for the execution of development projects in developing countries. Takatoshi Nishikata, Chief Representative of JICA in Pakistan office said, "Natural disaster should not, and I hope it would not check Japan's endeavour to play an active role in global development and assistance to the developing countries".
Pakistan is the largest recipient of Japanese grants, technical and official development assistance (ODA) at present. Japan is the only country, which disbursed its pledges for development projects in Pakistan. Around $500 million Japanese pledged assistance to Pakistan for reconstruction and rehabilitation of the flood-hit areas has already been released. In a report, economists for the association of industrialised countries said that Japan's public debt was expected to grow to more than twice its gross domestic product (GDP), leaving it a little choice but to increase the sales tax from its current level of five percent.
The chief representative stated that Japan itself needed international community's support after the devastating earthquake and the tsunami, but assured this scribe that Japan would actively pursue the implementation of multi-million dollar projects in Pakistan and play its role as a leading international development partner.
He said that JICA is supporting Pakistan with a tailor-made development package like health, education, environment, irrigation and agriculture, industrial development, disaster risk management, energy, transportation, water and sanitation. Regarding implementation issues, JICA has been facing some difficulties in the way of projects' implementation similar to the problems faced by other development institutions or agencies working in Pakistan.