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DEVELOPMENT: Aid Increase From Japan Not a 'Mission Impossible'

Interview with Senator Kiyohiko Toyama

BERLIN, Jun 9 2008 (IPS) - Increasing Japan's aid to developing countries in stark need of funds is not a "mission impossible", says Senator Kiyohiko Toyama, an influential member of the Upper House of the Diet, the country's parliament.

But a boost in official development assistance (ODA) from a meagre 0.17 percent now to perhaps some 0.5 percent of Japan's gross national income (GNI) some time in the coming years is not going to be an easy task. It will require concerted efforts by the government and parliament to raise public awareness about the importance of Japan's ODA for the country itself and for world peace and stability.

"We have no natural resources of our own, we have a small land area, and we are dependent on external trade," Senator Toyama told IPS European director Ramesh Jaura around the Japan-Africa summit meetings May 28-30 in Yokohama. The meetings were held as part of the fourth round of the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD).

Toyama chairs the Committee on Judicial Affairs in the Upper House of the bicameral Diet. The committee's deliberations have far-reaching implications for Japan's judicial system.

The 39-year-old senator who did his doctorate in peace studies from the University of Bradford in Britain held the office of Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs from November 2005 to September 2006.

Some excerpts from the interview:

IPS: Why is Japan not contributing more to ODA?

Kiyohiko Toyama (KT): I personally regret and feel a little bit ashamed as a former vice minister for foreign affairs that while the United Nations has asked countries like Japan to increase ODA to 0.7 percent of GNI, we are going in the reverse direction. But please try to understand that Japan is one of the very few countries whose GNI has not really changed much in the past ten years. South Korea's GNI has increased by 45 percent in the last ten years, China's some 100 percent, India's more than 100 percent. And even in some African and Latin American countries the average economic growth rate is 5 to 10 percent. A country like the Sudan that is notorious for harbouring internal conflict has registered a growth rate of 11 percent. In Japan we are staying put at 1.6 percent. As a result, Japan's GNI has not really increased.

IPS: But all those countries started off from more or less zero…

KT: Yes, Japan is still the second largest economy in the world. But please remember that around 18 years ago Japan's ODA contribution was number one in the world, more than that of the U.S. in absolute terms too. That was the height of Japanese economic recovery, miraculous economic recovery. But after 1992, we had a downturn and it lasted more than 10 years. During this time the public debt of the Japanese government and local governments has become phenomenally huge and now to erase this debt is the single biggest political issue for any Japanese politician. That is the background against which we have to discuss Japanese ODA contributions.

But of course the amount of money the Japanese ODA requires as a percentage of our GNI is not that huge in comparison with what we spend on public health services or nursing care for seniors, or for pensions. But the problem with the ODA in Japan is that politicians are finding it difficult to have the general public understand the importance of Japan's ODA contributions. In fact, some commentators are of the view that the Japanese nation on the whole has become very inward looking.

IPS: Why has it become inward looking? Wasn't it already inward looking?

KT: If I look only at my daily schedule, some 70 to 80 percent of my energy as a politician is spent on domestic political issues. Also the mass media is concentrating on domestic issues, scandals, mistakes of the government on social welfare issues. To an extent, things are the same in European countries. Politicians are always talking about the National Health Service (in Britain), pension schemes, etc.

IPS: And yet there are several charities and other NGOs in Britain.

KT: Yes. The big difference between European countries and Japan is that ordinary Japanese people are really not interested in anything except the destinations of their sightseeing trips. So they really love going to Egypt for watching pyramids. But there are very few people who want to go to Africa to see with their own eyes the reality of poverty. There are 120 million people in Japan. I talk to some 15,000 to 20,000 people a year. So I know from my experience of interacting with ordinary people that their priority issues are not ODA and helping poor countries.

IPS: Is it because there are no active charities and other NGOs in Japan?

KT: I used to be an advisor to a Japan-based NGO (Peace Winds Japan) which has humanitarian operations among others in Iraq, Mongolia, Indonesia and East Timor. Though this NGO was one of the topmost organisations in the area of supplying humanitarian emergency aid to the peoples in countries in trouble, its annual budget was rather small when compared to those of European NGOs such as Oxfam and World Vision. Why? Because private corporations and individuals in European countries donate to those groups. In Japan, they don't. We don't have a culture of charity. That's why more than 98 percent of the money that we use in helping people in need in other countries is actually public money. So that is the basic difference between European societies and Japan.

IPS: Japan is a member of the UN; it is not calling into question the decision of the UN General Assembly to have 0.7 percent of GNI going for ODA. And Japan belongs to that group of countries who also want to have a permanent seat in the Security Council. Which means it is one more reason that Japan should be striving to come closer to the UN target which is being fulfilled or even surpassed by the some of the European countries. Do you see any possibility of pushing through legislation obliging a Japanese government to meet the UN target, particularly in view of Japan striving for a permanent seat in the UNSC for which you need votes from Africa?

KT: In the current situation in Japan I think the prospect of getting a permanent seat in the Security Council is quite difficult. But I personally support the government's policy to ultimately aim at that. Japan does not have nuclear weapons, Japan is one of the developed countries with some leadership in Asia but we are not military oriented. The size of the share of our annual budget in military industry is negligible. So I think that if Japan can be a permanent member of the Security Council, it will have the potential of making a unique contribution to the preservation of world peace. That is why I am supporting this. But with our current ODA record I cannot expect much support from other countries and other people for Japan becoming a permanent member of the Security Council.

IPS: How about a special legislation?

KT: There is one thing we have to do before introducing a legislation securing 0.7 percent of GNP for ODA. Do you know that the value added tax (VAT), or goods and services tax (GST) in Japan is 5 percent compared to 19 to 25 percent in European countries. I was in Britain in the 1990s. Already then the VAT amounted to 17.5 percent. In Japan it was zero percent and one government was politically dead before a 3 percent tax could be introduced. Yet another government was shown the way out when it raised VAT to 5 percent. When Prime Minister (Junichiro) Koizumi came to power in 2001, the first thing he declared was "I am not interested in raising consumer tax as long as I am the prime minister." He became very popular and remained in office until 2006.

If we can levy a VAT of more than 10 percent we can easily get to an ODA-GNI ratio of 0.5 percent. But we might have to 'kill' two or three prime ministers. So this is a highly sensitive issue. Even in South Korea and mainland China you have to pay 10 percent VAT. In Japan it is 5 percent!

IPS: Is it the mission impossible?

KT: It is not really mission impossible. Japanese people are now feeling not for the sake of ODA but for the sake of maintaining the current social welfare system that we lack financial elements as a vital source for maintenance of social welfare. This may prove to be a good starting point that could also benefit ODA. Hopefully TICAD will help create better appreciation of the needs of the developing lands and the responsibility a rich country such as Japan bears in the interest of world peace and international stability.