The Japanese government has decided to provide up to 500 billion JPY (4.8 billion USD) worth of loans for developing countries, including Vietnam , to combat climate change over the next five years.

According the Japanese government, the credit programme aims at winning the developing countries’ support for an initiative to build a new global agreement on reducing greenhouse effect gas emissions. The initiative is expected to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which will expire in 2012.

Under the lending programme, the beneficiary countries will set specific objectives to cut down the volume of greenhouse effect gas emissions in such areas as energy and industry./.