Japan and the World Bank

Japan joined the World Bank in August 1952 and began to borrow the large sums necessary for its post-war reconstruction. The first loan, signed in 1953, was for an electric power generating project. In the 1950s, the loans were directed toward electric power generation, including dam construction, and the steel, automobile, manufacturing and shipbuilding sectors. Entering the 1960s, roads and transport infrastructure became the primary targets and funds were borrowed to construct the Meishin Expressway and Tokaido Shinkansen bullet train line, among others. In 1966, Japan signed its final World Bank loan and became the 11th country to graduate from borrower status. The total amount borrowed by Japan from the World Bank in 31 loans amounted to $863 million, with the final repayment made in 1990.

For more information, please see World Bank's Loans to Japan.

Partnership and Cooperation between Japan and the World Bank
 
Since the opening of its Tokyo Office in 1970, the World Bank has fostered a wide range of partnerships with Japan, ranging from the Japanese Government to the private sector, academics and research institutes, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and civil society organizations.

Japan is now the second largest supplier of capital to the World Bank and an important partner to the World Bank in many fields. Japan is also one of the largest donors to trust funds that help the World Bank and its partners support the achievement of development results at global, regional, and country levels.  The largest share has gone to the Japan Policy and Human Resources Development (PHRD) Fund and the Global Environment Facility.  Other important beneficiaries have been the Global Fund for Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM), the Japan Social Development Fund (JSDF), HIPC, the Iraq and West Bank and Gaza Trust Funds, and the Consultant Trust Fund (CTF).

The   Japan Policy and Human Resource Development Fund (PHRD), established in 1990 as a partnership between the Government of Japan and the World Bank, has supported technical assistance (TA) activities in more than 140 countries. PHRD is currently one of the World Bank's largest sources of grant funds available to developing countries. The Fund's objective is poverty reduction in developing countries, which is achieved through technical assistance and institutional strengthening, supporting the design and implementation of World Bank-financed projects. The strength of PHRD comes from its ability to make resources available to the public sector in the poorest countries to acquire international technical expertise and promote capacity building, helping countries to formulate their own policy reforms and investment programs in support of poverty reduction and socio-economic growth.  The Annual Reports in both English and Japanese are available   here.

The Japan Social Development Fund (JSDF) was established by the Government of Japan and the World Bank in June 2000 as an untied mechanism for providing direct assistance to the poorest and most vulnerable groups in eligible member countries of the World Bank Group. As of March 2005, the Government of Japan had provided over US$250 million to the JSDF and over 160 grants, amounting to more than US$180 million, had been approved. The Fund aims to build capacity and provides grants for promoting broad participation in the development process. Projects financed by the Fund are selected on the basis of their compliance with the developing country’s Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) or World Bank Country Assistance Strategy (CAS), or as a World Bank pilot project in planning, or as a supplementary project for an existing World Bank project already underway.  The Annual Reports in both English and Japanese are available here.

Japan also contributes to the World Bank Institute (WBI) programs contributing to human resource advancement in developing countries. Activities range from general training run in partnership with various development institutions, to the Brain Trust Program, which applies economic development research from the Asian region to developing countries.

More broadly, Japan is delivering a major assistance program to reconstruction operations (Kosovo, Timor-Leste, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Iraq) and post-conflict assistance. Japan and the World Bank also cooperate to help people suffering from the effects of natural disasters: for the Indian Ocean Tsunami disaster, the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) worked in close conjunction with the World Bank to conduct a study to identify specific needs for reconstruction.

The partnership between Japan and the World Bank at the operational level is now very dynamic, especially in Asia (both Eastern and Central).  Areas for close collaboration include joint project programming and co-financing, research, collaboration on in-country and regional distance learning and knowledge sharing activities linked with the global distance learning network (GDLN).  In June 2004, Japan provided a five-year, multi-year commitment of $25 million to establish the Tokyo Distance Learning Center to connect to the GDLN.