Japan may be replaced by Germany as the world's second-largest aid donor in 2006, only five years after losing to the United States its long-held status as No. 1, according to a Foreign Ministry document obtained Tuesday by The Japan Times.
The document, a position paper, is a desperate bid by the Foreign Ministry to counter the Finance Ministry's plan to trim the official development assistance budget for fiscal 2003 by 10 percent, as it did for fiscal 2002.
The prediction that Japan's ODA ranking will fall, which could dilute some of the government's diplomatic might, comes ahead of an annual summit of top leaders from the Group of Eight countries in Canada later this month and the World Summit on Sustainable Development in South Africa from the end of August through early September.