The world has moved into an information-intensive age. The boom in Internet services has steadily heightened the Internet's own value as a marketing medium. To keep pace with these trends, MoFA has set up and begun actively utilizing its own web site for the public dissemination of information. In terms of content, an effort has been made to ensure that the site offers an abundance of information on ODA affairs.

Take the ODA Annual Report and ODA Virtual Tour, for example. The annual report has been published every year since FY 1992, and contains detailed information on topics ranging from trends in Japanese ODA policy, implementation of the ODA Charter, and policies on country- specific aid to ODA budget breakdowns by government agency, actual disbursements, yen loans, grants, and lists of companies commissioned to perform development surveys. MoFA has plans to make the annual report available for viewing on its web site, beginning with the edition for FY 1997.

Most ODA projects are implemented overseas, a situation that does not give the average Japanese citizen much opportunity to get a glimpse of what those projects actually entail. The ODA Virtual Tour was created as a way of compensating for that limitation, and allows viewers to engage in video-driven "virtual" inspection tours of selected project sites. At present, virtual tours are available for projects in Thailand, Fiji, and Samoa, and will soon be augmented by tours of other projects in Laos and Vietnam.

MoFA's aid agencies are also striving to utilize the Internet for information disclosure and public relations purposes. JICA plans to drastically overhaul its own web site by the end of calendar 1998. The OECF, moreover, now has a web site that allows access to detailed information on yen loans (including contract dates and amounts, contract terms and conditions, and the names of project contractors).

The URL for the ODA Corner on MoFA's web site is as follows: http://www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/gaiko/oda/index.html