Although nearly a year has passed since Japan announced its controversial multibillion-yen aid plan for Myanmar, not a single penny has been disbursed to the cash-strapped, military-ruled Southeast Asian country.

Did Japan drop the aid plan due to a barrage of criticism from home and abroad?

"Absolutely not," one senior government aid official said. "We are continuing preparations for the aid plan quietly but steadily."

In early April, then Foreign Minister Yohei Kono conveyed the plan to a visiting vice foreign minister of the Myanmar military regime, now known as the State Peace and Development Council.

Under the aid plan, grants-in-aid worth between 3 billion yen and 3.5 billion yen are to be provided in several installments to help the SPDC repair the superannuated Baluchaung hydroelectric power plant in the eastern province of Kayah.

Official development assistance extended by Japan to developing countries consist of yen loans, grants-in-aid and technical assistance.

The power plant, built four decades ago with Japanese economic aid extended as part of wartime compensation, is symbolic of the relationship between Japan and Myanmar, formerly Burma.

The 3 billion yen to 3.5 billion yen in aid would be the largest sum extended by Japan to Myanmar for any single project since the military took power in a 1988 coup. The military annulled the results of a 1990 election, in which prodemocracy leader and 1991 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy won in a landslide victory.

The aid plan for the Baluchaung project was announced at a time when tensions appeared to be easing between the SPDC and Suu Kyi, who resumed dialogue with the council in October 2000.

Japanese officials explained at the time that the aid plan was intended to encourage dialogue between the SPDC and Suu Kyi, and to bring about other favorable changes in Myanmar, particularly in the areas of human rights and democracy.

But Japan's aid plan drew immediate criticism both at home and abroad. While Japan has advocated a policy of "constructive engagement" with Myanmar, the United States and European industrialized countries have adopted a get-tough approach and kept in place economic and other sanctions.

After the 1988 coup, Japan effectively froze its ODA to Myanmar. But in 1995, it began to extend relatively small amounts of ODA, although limited to projects that were started with Japanese aid before the coup or projects that meet Myanmar citizens' "basic human needs."

Under this new policy, for example, Japan provided 2.5 billion yen in yen loans in 1997 for repair work at Yangon International Airport, which officials claimed was so superannuated that it could pose a risk to safety.

This time around, Japan has defended the Baluchaung aid plan as serving the basic human needs of Myanmar citizens, saying it would help the country's acute power-supply shortages.

A senior Foreign Ministry official said: "This is not a simple ODA project. Of course, it is a emergency humanitarian project because any halt to power supplies from the Baluchaung plant would cause great troubles for many Myanmar citizens.

"But at the same time, it has a strategic significance," said the official, requesting anonymity. "We want to encourage dialogue between Suu Kyi's NLD and the SPDC through ODA like this. In the case of Myanmar, we are keeping in mind democratization more strongly than in the case of any other Asian country when we use ODA."

However, the official refused to predict when the first installment of the grants-in-aid for the Baluchaung project will actually be disbursed.

"We are still in the stage of studying the project," he said. "We cannot say for sure the timing of the first installment at this moment."

But another senior Foreign Ministry official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, acknowledged that the work on the "basic design" of the project is almost completed. The work has been conducted by the Japan International Cooperation Agency, a government-affiliated aid organ.

The official said that after the work on the basic design is completed, the government will begin to consider the specific timing of the first tranche of the grants-in-aid money, which will come at least within the next several months.