Japan Prime Minister reveals Japan plan to offer enhanced trade insurance

The Prime Minister of Japan an island country in East Asia, Shinzo Abe has recently unveiled Japan’s plan to offer enhanced trade insurance to boost private sector investment in Africa, as his country competes with rival China for influence in the resource-rich continent.

The prime minister told the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) that, he wants to make a promise and it was attended by a few dozen African leaders and representatives of international organizations such as the World Bank.

Abe stressed that, “The Japanese government will do its utmost so that our private-sector investment in Africa, which came to $20 billion over the past three years, will be expanded continuously.”

Similarly, the enhanced insurance would fully cover loans to African governments, their affiliated institutions or private companies buying Japanese goods for infrastructure projects in Africa, according to government briefing materials and a state-run firm offering trade insurance.

In the prime minister’s speech, he said that, “For example, our cooperation with local financial institutions will create a new trade insurance that could cover 100% of your transactions.”

He did not make a major funding announcement at the Tokyo meeting.

However, at the last TICAD conference in the Kenyan capital Nairobi in 2016, Japan pledged $30 billion in public and private support for infrastructure development, education and healthcare in Africa over three years.

It was stated that, the Foreign investment in sub-Saharan Africa rose 13% last year to $32 billion, bucking a global downward trend and reversing two years of decline, according to a United Nations report published in June.

Also, last September at a summit with African leaders in Beijing, Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged $60 billion in financing for Africa and wrote off some debt for the continent’s poorer nations.

In conclusion, the Western critics say the Chinese funding is saddling the continent with unsustainable debt, but Beijing denies it is engaging in “debt trap” diplomacy.

Source: Reuters