by Piyaporn Hawiset
16 October 2000
A team of Japanese citizens went to Vietnam in October 2000 to assess whether Japanese taxpayers were getting their money's worth from their government's massive official development assistance (ODA) program with Hanoi. The 10-person team, comprising members of the public sent by the government, arrived in Vietnam on October 8 and stayed until October 13 to assess projects ranging from primary schools to power stations and port rehabilitation.
"Taking the economic situation in Japan into consideration, Japanese people think it necessary to take advantage of the limited national budget in the most efficient and effective fashion," a statement from the Japanese embassy said. "Furthermore, they raise a question of whether or not the Japanese ODA projects seriously benefit people in aided countries."
A Japanese diplomat said Japan's ODA to Vietnam from 1992 up until 1999 totalled 735 billion yen or $6.8 billion, mostly in the form of soft loans. The embassy statement said the citizens would report their findings to the Japanese government. The diplomat said all ODA recipients were now subject to such probes, which did not imply any suspicion of misuse of funds. Japan had also been reviewing its aid to China as part of a broader effort to make its aid strategy more efficient.
Earlier that week, the Japanese president of the Asian Development Bank, Tadao Chino, urged Vietnam to continue with economic and administrative reforms to free up hundreds of millions of dollars of backed up loans from his bank. The ADB pledged $1.8 billion of loans to Vietnam since it resumed lending to the country in 1993, but less than half had been disbursed as loan guidelines had not been met, particularly with administration and management of project finances. One glaring example has been the ADB-financed Irrigation and Flood Portection Rehabilitation Project in which there has been serious diversion of funds, misuse of loaned money, conflict of interest and other acts of corruption which caused the National Assembly to set up a special investigation committee to review the case and make recommendations for arrest. It already recommended the arrest of Nguyen Van Chuong, the director of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development's Water Resources Management Sub-Project Office No. 406 in Thanh Hoa over "economic losses and financial and management irregularities" related to the construction of the Bai Thuong Dam and rehabilitation of the Song Chu Irrigation System.