A government advisory panel submitted to Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi on Thursday a final report on official development assistance policy criticizing the administration's moves to slash ODA spending under its reform drive.
The report urges Koizumi to consider the issue carefully and calls for the Cabinet to play the central role in deciding a basic ODA strategy.
The panel, headed by Yukio Okamoto, senior counselor at the Cabinet Secretariat and a former Foreign Ministry bureaucrat, was strongly against cutting the ODA budget further when drawing up the budget for the next fiscal year.