Japan will help the Philippines achieve its ambition to become an upper middle-income economy through sustained official development assistance (ODA), according to Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) president Akihiko Tanaka.
At an online press briefing commemorating JICA's 70th anniversary held on Tuesday, Oct. 1, Tanaka said that as part of reparations after the Second World War, Japan had extended ODA — cheap loans, grants and technical assistance — to the Philippines, Myanmar and Vietnam.
The Philippines was under Japanese rule from 1941 to 1945, until its American colonizers liberated the country and granted independence in 1946.
Among the recent initiatives that Japanese taxpayers' money funded in the Philippines included peace-building efforts in the war-torn southern island of Mindanao, as well as flood prevention projects in Pasig and Marikina rivers, Tanaka noted.
Moving forward, Tanaka said Japan's aid agency will continue supporting Philippine economic growth and competitiveness.
"The Philippines is a very important partner for JICA. And they are in the stage of becoming an upper middle-income country, so they need to reinforce their economic foundation," Tanaka, who answered media questions in Japanese, was quoted by his English translator as saying. The Philippines expects to graduate to upper middle-income status by late 2025 or early 2026.
In particular, Tanaka said urban transport is "necessary," such that JICA will assist the government in rolling out commuter railway projects connecting the northern and southern parts of the country.
Tanaka also committed to have "peace becoming rooted" as a key JICA initiative in Mindanao.
Besides ODA, Tanaka said Japan would also extend so-called official security assistance (OSA) to the Philippines, especially in maritime security, amid heightened tensions in the West Philippine Sea.
For instance, Tanaka pointed to Japan's assistance to the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG). To recall, technical cooperation under JICA recently allowed the Japan Coast Guard (JCG) to provide capacity-building support to the PCG in the areas of fire-fighting training and on-board boat maneuvering training, among others.
Tanaka is a well-known political science scholar in Japan, with expertise in international security.
Last month, JICA and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) said they had "identified potential areas of development cooperation in the Philippines, Central Asia, and the Pacific Islands."
Back in April, the Philippines, Japan and the US announced their plan to jointly develop the Luzon Economic Corridor as the newest — and the first in the Indo-Pacific region — economic corridor of the G7’s Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment.
The Luzon Economic Corridor aims to interconnect Clark and Subic Bay — two former American military bases, now industrial zones — with Batangas and Manila to generate more high-impact infrastructure investments.
JICA Philippines chief representative Takema Sakamoto had said the Japanese aid agency is currently preparing over 10 candidate-projects for the Philippines — mostly infrastructure — for next year.
According to Sakamoto, JICA is eyeing to extend more "soft" or low-interest loans and technical assistance to the Philippines, which in recent years was one of the top three beneficiary-countries of Japanese aid annually.