Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) is one of Nepal’s oldest development partners. It has been engaged in the country since 1970. During this time, JICA’s development assistance has covered wide range of sectors, from transport, energy, water and sanitation to education, health, peace building and governance. JICA has also announced a huge amount of assistance for post-earthquake reconstruction. The Kathmandu Post caught up with Sakuma Jun, chief representative of JICA’s Nepal office, to talk about its assistance strategy, ongoing reconstruction process and future assistance. Excerpts: 

It’s been almost five decades since JICA came to Nepal. How do you look back on those years?

JICA started its engagement in Nepal in 1970, initially through JICA volunteers and then gradually scaling up cooperation activities. These five decades have been eventful for both JICA and Nepal. As development partner, JICA’s assistance is not only focused on the infrastructure sector but also human capacity development. Over these years, around 5,000 government officials have been trained in Japan through JICA while more than 2,500 JICA experts and 1,300 volunteers have come to Nepal. By promoting such face-to-face cooperation, JICA has not only provided support for Nepal’s development endeavor but also contributed much to developing good bilateral relations between Japan and Nepal.

What are the major areas that JICA is currently engaged in?

JICA’s overall objective is to support Nepal for its sustainable and balanced economic growth. All our supports are governed by four pillars.

The first pillar is infrastructure and institutional development under which we’ve been providing assistance for the Tanahu Hydropower Project, Melamchi Water Treatment Plant, Nagdhunga Tunnel.

We’re assisting Nepal for the promotion of democracy and federalization under pillar two. With Nepal in the process of implementing federalism, support for enactment of a new civil code and institutionalization of community mediation are some of the programmes under this pillar.

The third pillar is related to rural development and poverty reduction to narrow the gap between rural and urban areas. The fourth pillar, recovery and reconstruction, is a new one which we introduced after the Gorkha Earthquake to provide support to Nepal for post-earthquake rebuilding.

JICA has pledged a huge amount of assistance for post-earthquake reconstruction. In what areas is JICA assisting the National Reconstruction Authority (NRA), and how much money has been disbursed to the government?

The Japan government and JICA had committed Rs 30 billion for supporting reconstruction and recovery during the donors’ conference in June 2015. Housing reconstruction and public school reconstruction are the two major projects currently ongoing. We have already disbursed Rs3 billion to Nepal government for housing reconstruction. Regarding the schools, rehabilitation of about 90 public schools has been completed and now we are proceeding the School Reconstruction Project where about 300 public schools are targeted. We're also providing support for reconstruction of other public facilities such as hospitals in Kathmandu – Bir Hospital, and Paropakar Maternity Hospital, women and children offices, health posts, VDC offices.

Our support is not limited to financial assistance for reconstruction. We have also provided technical cooperation such as mason training for safer housing, livelihood training for affected farmers. Furthermore, JICA recently handed over the landslide hazard maps of Gorkha and Sindhupalchowk districts to NRA which focuses on slope failure risks evaluated for each 50m x 50m square grid. This initiative was first of its kind for Nepal under JICA's initiative, which assists NRA to identify the risk zones in and around the earthquake affected areas in order to provide appropriate information regarding the hazard risks to the residents.

Donors have reservations given the slow pace of reconstruction and politics surrounding the appointment of the NRA CEO. How do you view the whole reconstruction process?

I understand there have been criticisms about the slow pace of reconstruction process and ineffectiveness of institutional arrangement among the related ministries. However, I recognize the government, especially NRA has been making serious efforts for reconstruction in spite of its understaffed situation and hence we have been supporting them.

Generally speaking, it takes time for the recovery process. Japan is also a disaster prone country and as you may know in 2011, we also had massive earthquake in eastern Japan. Since then six years have already passed but still we're under the way of recovery and struggling for it.

Let’s talk about JICA’s assistance to the infrastructure sector. JICA has given a yen loan to the Tanahu Hydropower Project. What is the status of the project? Has the government requested yen loans for other projects too?

The Tanahu Hydropower Project which is co-finance with ADB is currently in the stage of contractor bidding. Bidding submission deadline is May and process is expected to be completed by October. Regarding Nagdhunga Tunnel Project, Department of Road has just signed an engineering contract with Nippon Koei Co. Ltd.

On Nepal’s request for new yen loan, it’s too early to talk about it as we're still at the negotiating stage. All I can say is there are some candidate infrastructure projects. We’d like to expedite the formulation process as soon as possible.

Political intervention, especially by local politicians, has hampered large donor-funded infrastructure projects, Bhairahawa Airport being the latest example. How are donors taking such disruptions?

First of all, let me say that corruption is one issue we have to definitely avoid. In particular, as JICA’s assistance comes from Japanese tax payers, transparency and accountability are essential for us.

In that sense, we should also keep our activities away from excessive intervention from the third parties and in fact we’ve not so far experienced it.

One of the concerns donors have raised is the government’s inability to utilize aid money and the country’s absorption capacity. How do you see this?

I admit that sometimes we face some difficulties in project formulation and implementation. I think most government officials are competent and supportive to our activities. However frequent change of rules (e.g. tax exemption rule for Development Partners’ activities) and persons in charge seems sometimes hinder the smooth implementation of our activities. Because of such issues, it sometimes takes very long time to proceed the projects.

As I stressed earlier, the whole issue here is of having institutional memory. We at JICA believe that capacity development of people and institution is most important for effective utilization of assistance. That is why, JICA not only provides support to hard sector i.e. infrastructure but also values capacity development. For example, through the 20 year’s grant aid project for construction of Sindhuli road, DOR (Department of Road) has acquired enough capacity for operation and maintenance of the road under collaboration with Japanese experts. That is one of the very important aspects of the project.

If elections are held as planned, economic development will be prioritized; and Nepal will need more resources and donor assistance. Will donors like JICA provide more aid?

I think the support for the local government will be one of our focus areas in the future. The new local governments that will be formed after local government need capacity development. Hence, we are now examining how we can support them. In fact, we’ve already started some projects like support for dissemination of community mediation which will contribute to solve the disputes at the local level. We are also supporting the capacity development of the Local Development Training Academy (LDTA).

In the future we might add some projects or programmes to strengthen local governments. We are thinking in this line and keenly observing the local polls. I hope local polls will be held peacefully.