Following is the statement from JICA Sri Lanka Office Chief Representative Tetsuya Yamada on the occasion of the Seventieth Anniversary of Japan’s international development cooperation:

“October 6, 2024, marked the 70th anniversary of the commencement of Japan’s international development cooperation. On this day, Japan joined the Colombo Plan as the 15th member country. Colombo Plan was established in 1951 to promote economic and social development of Asia and the Pacific region, and it was the first international development organisation established after the World War II. Its basic concept is self-help and mutual help to enhance human resource development and South–South cooperation mainly through technical cooperation, sharing and transfer of knowledge and experiences among its members.

“Colombo Plan was not the only one for which Ceylon was taking an initiative in the international development arena. Ceylon was one of the five-country ‘Colombo powers’, comprising Ceylon, Burma, India, Indonesia, and Pakistan, and hosted the Colombo Conference in 1954, leading the way towards historic Bandung Conference (Asian–African Conference) in 1955, where 29 countries representing about half of world’s population at that time gathered to show solidarity of what we now call the ‘Global South’. The Bandung Conference concluded with a communique that declared 10 Bandung Principles, which include protection of human rights, peaceful solution to international conflicts in conformity with the UN Charter, respect for justice and international obligations, and promotion of economic and cultural cooperation.

“In the 1950s, Ceylon was indeed playing a central role in the international arena in forging common values shared among many nations. After 70 years, many of those values Ceylon aspired to uphold with other nations still hold relevant, perhaps even more than those days in this time of compound crisis.

“It was against this backdrop that Japan’s international development cooperation began. Starting with providing technical training programmes and expanding its cooperation programmes to include loans, grant, volunteer programmes, etc., Japan has become one of the leading bilateral development partners in the world. Over these seven decades, as a major global partner, Japan has extended its cooperation programmes to 190 countries and regions, contributing to their economic and social development as well as peace and prosperity in the global community.

“In synergy with the domestic initiatives of recipient countries, JICA’s (Japan International Cooperation Agency) cooperation programmes, such as those for infrastructure development and human resources development, have laid a solid foundation for their development. In Sri Lanka, since the outset of its development cooperation to Sri Lanka in 1954, JICA has committed over 1.1 trillion Japanese Yen in ODA loans for nearly 120 projects and programmes. Many of these loans have been used for transformative economic infrastructure development in Sri Lanka. For example, JICA provided 11 loans amounting to 85 billion Japanese Yen in total for the development of the Colombo Port from 1980 to 1999. As a result, the Colombo Port now ranks the 23rd in the world in terms of container handling volume, even exceeding that of Tokyo Port and Yokohama Port combined, contributing to the economy of Sri Lanka and South Asia region.

“Also, JICA has been supporting the development of the Bandaranaike International Airport (BIA) with four loans since 1983, total amount of which stands at 97 billion Japanese Yen. The most recent two loans for the current phase of the BIA improvement have unfortunately been affected by the economic crisis, but Japan has recently resumed the disbursement for the project in July this year. If completed, the passenger handling capacity of BIA will be more than a double from the current level of six million passenger movements per year to 15 million, which will be a large source for additional foreign currency income.

“The Colombo Plan’s basic concept has always been shared by JICA in its fundamental principle to respect ownership and self-help efforts of the partner country and unwavering commitments with a long-term vision and engagement to bring about impact and changes. JICA highly values people-to-people interactions, bringing strengths together through dialogue, rather than the unilateral transfer of technology and knowledge. Over the past seven decades, JICA accepted more than 14,000 Sri Lankan Trainees to JICA training programmes. More than 1,150 JICA volunteers in various fields have been dispatched to various places in Sri Lanka. This approach enabled us to offer solutions tailored to local contexts and foster human resources for the sustainable growth. It has also deepened mutual understanding and trust, and thereby strengthened bilateral relations between Sri Lanka and Japan.

“The effect of our cooperation was not contained in the bilateral relationship, but it sometimes went beyond the borders to benefit other developing countries in the world. For example, the Dental Science Faculty of the University of Peradeniya, for which Japan provided a large-scale grant assistance and technical assistance to develop educational and clinical facilities and enhance human resource capacity over 25 years ago, has been accepting a number of foreign students from other nations in the region and the world.

5S and KAIZEN are well-known methods developed in Japanese industry for working environment improvement and quality control. Sri Lanka was among the first countries to apply 5S and KAIZEN methods in public hospitals and achieved great results in improving the healthcare service performance with limited resources. Based on the experience of Sri Lanka, JICA systematised the 5S-KAIZEN-Total Quality Management (TQM) approach in health sector cooperation to disseminate to developing countries. Since 2007, JICA has been introducing the 5S-KAIZEN-TQM model in countries in Asia and Africa. At least 500 healthcare facilities in 21 countries are currently practicing this model. This is a good example of knowledge co-creation with our partner countries. Building reciprocal relationships through continuous engagement with partner countries to create solutions is a strong tradition of Japan’s cooperation. It is increasingly important to share such solutions to other countries facing similar problems in times of complex global issues. JICA is ready to advance co-creation by leveraging the tradition.

“Human security is also an important guiding principle that underlies all of Japan’s development cooperation. Human security refers to a state in which people, as individuals, are free from fear and want and can live with dignity. Amid this compounded crisis many people find their human security threatened; critically, vulnerable people in developing countries are the most seriously affected. JICA is further committed to ensuring human security by its efforts for poverty reduction through quality growth.

JICA’s vision is “Leading the World with Trust”. Our development cooperation has been focusing on human security, equal partnerships, and self-ownership by developing countries. We are committed to continued cooperation with Sri Lanka and other developing countries, and like-minded development partners. In a world of disruptions, it is important to maintain the values we consider essential, and that we respond to new challenges in a new way together, building on the trust that Japan and Sri Lanka have built together over the years.”