Statement of the Government of Japan to IFAD’s Twenty-Eighth Session of the Governing Council

Mr. Chairperson, Mr. Båge, President of IFAD,
Distinguished Governors, Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is my great pleasure to have an opportunity to speak, on behalf of Japan, at the twenty eighth session of the Governing Council of IFAD.

Mr. Chairperson,

About 70% of the poor in LDCs are engaged in agriculture and they live in rural areas. Facing this fact, Japan has consistently regarded agriculture as one of the most significant sectors for poverty reduction. Japan has systematically implemented in the mid to long run, assistance for LDC’s self help efforts to enhance their food production, as well as providing emergency foods to LDCs suffering from food shortage.

In the 2002 alone, Japan’s assistance in agricultural sector totalled 640 million US$, which is, by far, the largest (40%) of the bilateral ODA in this sector. Based on this recognition and its experiences, Japan will highlight the importance of agriculture and rural development in a series of upcoming meetings this year.

IFAD, with rural development as its mission, can make great contribution toward the achieving of MDGs through its assistance to rural development and poverty reduction of rural poor. Japan highly appreciates the efforts made by IFAD to prioritize assistance to comparatively small scale projects and the poorest areas and to strengthen result based management and proper finance management for enhancing aid effectiveness in agriculture.

In implementing development projects, particularly from the viewpoints of human security, donor countries and Aid agencies should comprehensively analyze the factors of rural poverty. They should pay much more attention to the most vulnerable people, and provide support for improving the rural poor’s access to natural resources and to financial services, developing infrastructure to improve access to domestic markets, and promoting the empowerment of women.

Mr. Chairperson,

Challenges to achieve MDGs are widely addressed in every development analysis, particularly in the context of African development. Japan has been providing assistance to develop and disseminate New Rice for Africa (NERICA) for poverty reduction. Many of the Sub Saharan poor peasants live in marginal lands which are unsuitable for intensive agriculture production. NERICA, which has superior tolerance to those harsh and dry conditions, is an important crop to help the rural poor in near dry areas.

IFAD has been engaged in community based agricultural development in the poorest areas of LDCs. For this reason, Japan regards NERICA support will perfectly fit into the IFAD’s agricultural strategy.

In view of further strengthening the cooperative relationship between Japan and IFAD, Japan would like very much to request IFAD’s further support to NERICA.

Mr. Chairperson,

The world has experienced the unprecedented Tsunami disaster at the turn of the year. We have to bear in mind the fact, that it is the poor who suffer the most from natural disasters including tsunami. It is important that, the affected communities will rebuild the capacity to cope with possible future disasters, and in doing so, in the medium to long run, poverty reduction in rural areas need to be achieve. It is further needed, for donor communities, to enhance their cooperation, bringing together their experience and skills, for mitigating the damage by disaster and for poverty reduction of the rural areas.

Japan pledged a total of 50 million US$ of grant aid for the Tsunami disaster, all of which has been disbursed by January 21. In addition to this, Japan co hosted the World Conference on Disaster Reduction (WCDR) and proposed “Initiative for Disaster Reduction through ODA” to incorporate the aspect of disaster reduction into development assistance. Based on this initiative, Japan will further promote, through ODA, the disaster reduction cooperation to support self-help and human resources development of LDCs. We will also promote the collaborative multi-lateral projects. In this context, Japan highly appreciates IFAD’s loan commitment of 10 million US$ for the reconstruction of Tsunami affected areas. Japan sincerely hopes that these contributions from IFAD would be of great help to rebuild self help of those who suffered from Tsunami.

To conclude, Mr. Chairperson, I would like to reaffirm that Japan intends to continue to actively support rural development and auspices to further strengthen the cooperative relationship with IFAD which has extensive knowledge and expertise in this field.

Thank you very much.