Fresh from surviving a hard-fought battle against political pressure for Draconian cuts in its foreign-aid budget, Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori's government is stepping up efforts to implement his $15 billion aid initiative in the area of information technology.
To be sure, the government lost its battle to keep about $10 billion in its annual foreign-aid budget intact. The aid budget for fiscal 2001, which starts in April, will be slashed by 3 percent.
But the government put up a good fight. The size of budget reduction was much smaller than the 30 percent cut demanded earlier by Shizuka Kamei, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's outspoken top policy chief. If the foreign-aid budget had been chopped by 30 percent, the $15 billion aid initiative would have been affected.