Japan should make its official development assistance more efficient and transparent to convince the public that the funds are spent in the nation's interest, according to the fiscal 2000 white paper on ODA released Friday by the Foreign Ministry.
The report stresses the importance of ODA at a time when the public is criticizing the huge amounts Tokyo has spent -- the world's largest at $15.32 billion in 1999 -- to help smaller countries develop while its own economy stays stuck in a protracted slump.
Last year, some lawmakers in the Liberal Democratic Party called for a 30 percent cut in ODA. The government answered by reducing its ODA budget for fiscal 2001 by 3 percent from the previous year to 1.015 trillion yen.