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Overseas Economic Cooperation Council Tuesday, May 20, 2008 JAPANESE

Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda held the 16th meeting of the Overseas Economic Cooperation Council at the Diet building. The meeting covered the topic of "Quantity and Quality of Japan's Official Development Assistance (ODA)," in the light of Japan hosting the Fourth Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD IV) at the end of this month and the G8 Hokkaido Toyako Summit in July. At the meeting, the Council agreed on announcing a strong initiative for assisting the development of Africa at TICAD IV, which is to be held at the end of this month. It was decided that Japan will double its ODA to Africa by 2012 to foster African growth. The doubled ODA will be used mainly for developing roads and other infrastructures on a broad scale, for enhancing cooperation in the area of maternal and child health support to provide better maternal care and save as many as 400,000 children's lives, for boosting agricultural productivity -- especially doubling the production of rice -- and for supplying safe drinking water. Moreover, the Council agreed that the Government will provide assistance by making proactive use of ODA, Other Official Flows (OOF), trade insurance, and other means to double direct investment in Africa by the private sector in the next five years from 2008 to 2012. Related link: Overseas Economic Cooperation Council TICAD IV (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan)