The Ministry of International Trade and Industry announced Friday it will broaden the range of countries and projects the government yen-loan scheme targets to aid economic reform in the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis. The special yen-loan scheme was established in 1998 on the initiative of Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi to help Asia recover from the economic crisis, which surfaced in 1997. A total of 600 billion yen in loans, with an interest rate of 1 percent and payable over 40 years, are budgeted from fiscal 1999 through 2001. MITI's move is in response to the region's needs and to Japanese industries with interests in the area. In addition, it will fall within the government's 18 trillion yen stimulus package announced in November. Under the original program, only Asian countries affected by the economic cri sis were eligible for the loans, which are intended to streamline distribution facilities such as roads, ports, airports, bridges and railroads; to beef up production bases such as power plants, irrigation and waterworks; and to deal with large-scale disaster prevention. Under the revised scheme, Asian countries as well as other developing countries that have either directly or indirectly been affected by the crisis can be beneficiaries. Newly added projects eligible for the yen-loan scheme concern information and communications and transportation bases in the field of distribution; transmission and distribution of electricity, pipelines, sewage, waste disposal and industrial estate in production; and large-scale disaster-prevention measures concerning quake-resistant public facilities, fire and emergency facilities, and meteorological networks. So far, 114.5 billion yen has been provided to projects in Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines, on condition that they are undertaken by Japanese companies and that at least half of the machinery and materials to be used for the projects are procured from Japan.