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Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Thursday pledged 1 trillion yen or P424-billion investment and development assistance aid to the Philippines over the next five years.

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“For the further development of the Philippines, we will create business opportunities through ODA (official development assistance) and private sector investments which together will be of the order of one trillion yen over the next five years,” Abe said in his joint statement with President Rodrigo Duterte in Malacañang.

“The joint committee on economic cooperation and infrastructure will be launched through which both the private and public sectors will provide a strong underpinning for nation building,” he added.

The Prime Minister said Japan “will leverage Japanese technology and know-how to the fullest extent to positively cooperate for the improvement of infrastructure in Metro Manila and the whole of the Philippines.”

In a Palace briefing with reporters, Japanese Press Secretary Yasuhisa Kawamura vowed to help the Philippines in its economic development.

“The bottomline of this announcement is that Japan is very eager of this cooperation for the business and the economic development of the Philippines by utilizing all those available resources,” Kawamura said.

But the Japanese official said the Philippines must vow to provide a business-friendly environment.

“At the same time, the Prime Minister underlined that this is a two-way street. This is not just a one-way of inflow of investments of money from Japan. I’d like to emphasize that a business-friendly environment on the side of the Philippines is also necessary. We’ll very much appreciate it if the Philippine officials and the private sector will cooperate with us,” he said.

For his part, Duterte said he and Abe “instructed our respective agencies to seek new areas of collaboration as well as to work on fulfilling the agreements signed in Tokyo last year during my visit.”

“As part of those efforts, we are encouraging our business sectors to intensify two-way trade and investments,” Duterte said. RAM

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