Japan will extend up to 392 million yen to India as a humanitarian grant to help eradicate polio in the country, Foreign Ministry officials said Wednesday.
It was Tokyo's first extension of aid to India since it froze new yen loans to the country in protest of two nuclear tests India conducted in May.
Finance Secretary Montek Singh Ahluwalia and Ambassador to India Hiroshi Hirabayashi exchanged letters on the aid agreement in New Delhi the same day. But ministry officials said the grant, extended from a humanitarian point of view, does not signify a change in Japan's aid policy toward India.
They said the money would be used to purchase polio vaccine. Meanwhile, the officials also said Japan would extend a grant-in-aid of up to 1.17 billion yen to the Philippines for a road construction project on Mindanao Island.