By AGENCIES
The Japanese government has announced its intention to provide another $1billion over the next five years for a second phase of the Enhanced Private Sector Assistance (EPSA) for Africa Initiative, as a follow-up to the G8 Camp David Summit held last month,
Japan’s Senior Vice Minister of Finance, Yukihisa Fujita, made the announcement recently during a joint session with AfDB President, Donald Kaberuka, and President of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), Akihiko Tanaka. During the joint session, Fujita said, “In Africa, we understand that private sector-led growth has been progressing well in various sectors in addition to mineral resources.
In order to promote poverty reduction through accelerating this movement, Japan launched in 2005 the EPSA initiative jointly with the AfDB. Today, I am privileged to announce that Japan decided to provide an additional one billion USD in Yen loans over the next five years.”
The renewed commitment comes after Japan’s achievement of a $1billion funding target for the first round of EPSA, which was set at the Gleneagles G8 Summit in 2005. AfDB President Kaberuka thanked the Japanese government for their continued support, especially in times of fiscal austerity, and celebrated the impact of EPSA to date.
“EPSA has played a key role in the development of regional infrastructure critical to sustaining African economic growth and has helped to turbocharge the AfDB’s private sector operations, which have taken a quantum leap forward, expanding nearly ten-fold over the lifespan of the first phase of EPSA.
It is building capacity for future growth through technical assistance and training for African enterprises and financial institutions supported by the Fund for African Private Sector Assistance” Kaberuka noted.
During the first five years of EPSA more than 70 projects were launched, leveraging an additional $1.2 billion of AfDB financing with the potential to touch the lives of all Africans.
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