Japan to continue supporting Pakistan for stability, growth

Islamabad : Ambassador of Japan Takashi Kurai has said Japan will continue supporting Pakistan for its stability and development adding the very basis of Japan’s assistance to Pakistan is a notion that its stability and development is important not only for Pakistan but also for the whole region of South Asia and beyond.

“I believe that no one would deny the significance stemming from its geographical location of the country. On that basis and with sincere hope for the stable and harmonised development of Pakistan, Japan’s ODA assistance policy will continue even in the coming days.”

Ambassador of Japan expressed these views while giving an exclusive interview to Diplomatic News Agency (DNA).

Ambassador Kurai further said Japan was supporting Pakistan not only by building infrastructure or providing some materials but also by human resource development through dispatching Japanese experts to Pakistan and receiving Pakistani people as trainees in Japan, which, we believe, facilitates transfer of Japanese technology to Pakistan.

To a question the ambassador said, all we have been doing since 1950’s is based on the recognition of the importance of Pakistan which has a huge potential for development of its own and at the regional level as well.

He said, having over 200 million of population and 63% of the whole population being under 30 years of age, human resource development is of critical importance to Pakistan, not only for its economic development but also for the young generation to remain an integral part of the community and to be kept away from extremism. On that basis, Japan gives priority to assistance to education.

“The statistics show us that in Pakistan there are around 52 million children from 5 to 16 years of age, out of whom 44% or around 23 million do not go to school, and this figure is the second largest next to Nigeria. In Pakistan, for children, once dropped out of public school system, it’s difficult to get back to it. By way of supporting the people who make great efforts to improve the situation, Japan has been assisting “Non-formal Education”, by which children are given access to the basic, if not complete, education,” he added.

The ambassador said, Japan has been supporting the polio eradication program in Pakistan since 1996 and the total amount of assistance has reached around 24 billion Japanese Yen. Through the commitment by the Pakistani government and the support by the international community including Japan, the polio cases have dramatically decreased to 3 cases in 2018 as of today from 1,500 cases in 1996. Japan continues to support polio eradication program in Pakistan until the notorious virus will be vanished.

To a question about culture cooperation Ambassador Takashi Kurai said the very foundation of state-to-state relationship is the relationship of the people by which the state is made. So in the long run, people-to-people relationship is the key. It relates to culture, religion, history and so forth.

Japan and Pakistan he said are geographically far from each other and the way of living is not the same but there are aspects in Pakistan which we respect and those in Japan which, hopefully, Pakistani people respect. Those are exactly the very basis of our people-to-people relationship and I would like to emphasize that the mutual respect is the key.

He said Japan deeply appreciates Pakistan’s efforts to fight against terrorism and he would like to express his heartfelt condolences to the victims and the bereaved families who have suffered immensely in this war against terrorism and also pray for the earliest recovery of those injured.

“Also as I said earlier, Pakistan’s location is geopolitically very important and its security situation as well as a stable economic development is one of the key factors for stability of the whole region,” he concluded.