Fujita Yasuo, Chief Representative of JICA Vietnam Office (Photo: VNA) Hanoi (VNA) – The capital that theJapan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) pledges to loan to Vietnam infiscal year 2017 (from April 2017 to March 2018) will not differ much from theprevious fiscal year.
Fujita Yasuo, Chief Representative of JICAVietnam Office, made the statement at the agency’s press conference on April20, adding that Vietnam remains one of the countries with the biggestJICA-funded projects in the world.
In FY 2016, Japan pledged to provide Vietnamwith 187.1 billion JPY (1.7 billion USD) in loans and disbursed 175.6 billionJPY (1.6 billion USD) for the country.
Fujita Yasuo said in FY 2017, JICA will maintainits support as in FY 2016 for the fields of promoting economic growth andinternational cooperation capacity, enhancing state governance, and supportingvulnerable groups.
However, the contents subject to the supportwill be adjusted in accordance with the Japanese Government’s policies, theVietnamese Government’s demand, and sustainable development goals.
The JICA representative said the disbursementfor FY 2017 is set to decrease from FY 2016 since the Thai Binh thermal powerplant project already passed the stage that needed much funding.
Additionally, that the Vietnamese Governmentcurbs the disbursement of corresponding capital from its budget will alsoinfluence JICA’s disbursement of the committed loans.
Fujita Yasuo pointed out obstacles to JICA’ssupport provision, elaborating that the handling of administrative proceduresand site clearance remain sluggish. Meanwhile, procedures for approving ODAprojects have become more complicated under the Vietnamese Government’s Decree16/2016/ND-CP on the management and use of foreign sponsors’ ODA andconcessional loans.
He stressed that JICA respects Vietnam’s publicdebt limit, but the country should simplify necessary procedures so as tofacilitate the disbursement of the committed capital and the implementation ofprojects.
The problems JICA has encountered also face otherforeign sponsors in Vietnam so they will work together to ask the VietnameseGovernment to tackle the aforementioned obstacles, he added.-VNA
VNA
