Mr. Chairman, Mr. President,
Distinguished Delegates, Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is my honour to represent Japan at this Thirty-second IFAD Governing Council.

First of all, I want to express my sincere gratitude and profound appreciation to Mr. Bäge for his dedication and his achievements for the development of the Organization in the past eight years. And I wish to congratulate the new president Mr. Nwanze on his election and hope to work closely together for great challenges in front of us.  I warmly welcome Republic of Marshall Islands as a new member.

Mr. Chairman,

About three fourths of the poor in the developing countries live in rural areas and are engaged in agriculture. 

Agriculture is one of the most important development agenda because it is not only the key for food production and a tool for alleviating the poor, but also related to global scale issues such as scarcity of water and climate change. 

Japan considers it highly important that each country in the world invests more in the agricultural sector and increases agriculture production through utilizing at best the potential resources it has.

Japan and IFAD are entrusted by the same policy direction such as; placing the main target on supporting the poorest poor, and assisting the way to reduce the  poor people through self-support and country ownership.

As expressed at the TICAD IV meeting held in Japan last year, our policy for Africa is based on the concept of human security and to realize “vibrant Africa” by escaping from the vicious cycle of hunger and poverty through assisting the capacity building and strengthening the institutional capacity at the community level as well as enhancing agricultural production.

Japan calls for the doubling of rice production in Africa in ten years as proposed in the TICAD IV meeting and we are glad to provide with its knowledge and experience we have accumulated in the field of rice production and irrigation.  For its implementation, the Coalition for African Rice Development,  namely CARD, has formed and started its work.  I hope that IFAD further support this initiative.

Soaring food prices last year has transformed food security into an issue of key importance to government leaders.  Japan as the chair of the G8 tackled this problem and the G8 Leaders’ Statement was issued in the Toyako Summit held last July. 

Although food prices have shown a downward trend, there is the possibility that they start rising again, because structural mismatch between demand and supply is left.  The world now suffers from the rapidly worsening economic and financial crisis and the MDGs to reduce hunger people by half are becoming farther to reach. So I urge all countries, international organizations and other stake holders to form a global partnership to address these challenges in a unified and coordinated manner.

Although Japanese government faces tough financial situation, and we are forced to cut back on financial contributions to many international development organizations, Japan committed up to US$60 million as its contribution to the eighth replenishment of IFAD. This is about 82% increase compared to our contribution during the last replenishment period. It shows our will to support further the IFAD and to proceed with our partnership. 

In doing so, I expect IFAD, firstly, to realize human security utilizing fully the comparative advantage you acquired over the years, secondly, to continue the ongoing organizational reform process.   Being one of the stake holders, Japan intends to assist and monitor these processes.

Mr. Chairman,

Finally, I would like to close my statement by expressing our wish to continue to strengthen the partnership between Japan and IFAD which possesses accumulated ample knowledge and expertise, both on the ground level as well as on the knowledge level.

Thank you.