Amid increasing public scrutiny of Japan's overseas aid policies, the World Bank will increase cooperation measures to ensure that official development assistance from Tokyo is used more effectively to fight poverty, according to Yukio Yoshimura, newly appointed head of the World Bank's office in Tokyo.

"It is the responsibility of the government and agencies to verify the effectiveness of aid," said Yoshimura, who at the end of July became the first World Bank vice president to be stationed in Japan.

To create a yardstick by which the success of projects can be gauged and followup measures can be improved, the World Bank must disseminate information and increase dialogue between local authorities, the Japanese government, the private sector and nonprofit organizations, Yoshimura said.

"We want to become a knowledge bank," he said.

Policymakers in Tokyo are currently engaged in intense soul-searching, with the nation's stagnant economy having prompted a clamor for further cuts in the ODA budget.

The government earmarked 910 billion yen for ODA in its initial budget for fiscal 2002, down 10.3 percent from the initial budget for fiscal 2001.

Despite promises from Foreign Ministry officials that a similar cut will not be made in the coming fiscal year, doubts remain about the aid in question, which has conventionally taken the form of overly sophisticated, expensive public works projects.

As the international community places greater focus on the fight against poverty, Japan needs to diversify and provide more "software," such as education and health aid, Yoshimura said.

"I think change is going on, but not so quickly," he said.

The appointment of Yoshimura, a former official at both the Finance Ministry and the Foreign Ministry, reflects the World Bank's increasing concerns over its second-largest shareholder.

"Japan intentionally degrades its own position in the world" by cutting aid to multilateral institutions and to areas in which Japan has supposedly little "strategic interest," such as in Africa, he said. "It is now, when Japan's economy is in difficulty, that Japan's contributions to the rest of the world will be most appreciated."