Japanese ODA consists of bilateral aid and aid provided through multilateral institutions. In 1997, Japan disbursed bilateral aid totaling 793.0 billion yen ($6.55 billion), down 11.2 percent on the year before. Conversely, disbursements of Japanese aid through multilateral institutions totaled 340.0 billion yen ($2.81 billion), up 153.2 percent year-on-year. That surge was attributable chiefly to the cycle of capital replenishment to multilateral development banks. As a result, overall ODA disbursements in 1997 totaled 1,132 billion yen ($9.36 billion), up 10.2 percent on the 1,027 billion yen level ($9.44 billion) registered the year before. ⁵

Japan has been the world's top donor of ODA for seven years running. By contrast, the U.S. disbursed over $3 billion less in 1997 than it did the year before (a setback of 34.2 percent), thus slipping from second to third place. This was largely because the OECD's 2. The 1997 Aid Track Record Development Assistance Committee stopped including aid to Israel in its ODA tabulations. Additional factors, including exchange-rate trends and flattened aid expenditure growth at the individual country level, also accounted for a 14.2 percent drop in total ODA disbursements by the 21 DAC member- countries in 1997: from $55.4 billion in 1996 to $47.6 billion.

Japan disbursed an ODA sum equivalent to 0.22 percent of GNP in 1997 (compared to 0.20 percent the year before), thus ranking 19th out of 21 DAC member-countries.

Total financial flows (ODA, public export credits, private investment, and other financing combined) from the industrialized nations and multilateral institutions to the developing countries fell to $272 billion in 1997, a decline of 26 percent from the $368 billion total registered the previous year. ⁶