Expert urges Japan to lead global health finance amid COVID crisis

Expert urges Japan to lead

Do me a favour.

This old crud is loathsome.

The entire article boils down to, "I want Japan to optimise their systems to get the greatest recognition for as limited effort as possible".

Yeah they have donated a lot of money, they have been doing that for ages. Soft diplomacy of building hospitals, and other infrastructure in Asia has been a race between Japan and China for the last decade.

The old guy wants a cookie for the third biggest economy "helping" foreign nations completely self-serving way and trying to disguise it as altruism.

On a final note, if this "commitment to donate" is like any other pledge given by a Japanese politician I wonder how much aid will reach the people and how much will be recycled into the pork barrel. I guarantee a behind every hospital built will be a J-company thrashing the contract for every yennie.

Sure ... Waste my tax money on the third world. Just ban them from entry. We don't need them here.

Would have been more informative if put in context of a list before covid.

Japan is probably the least hit economically until the present so maybe it's just to be expected that they were more able to help.

Yeah Japan was the top country of the list of G7 in throwing money away and the last of the G7 in intervention and vaccinations as in caring about it's own people.

None of the G7 or G20 countries need Japan to lead if they can't take care even at it's own people.

Remember the song Heaven and Hell lyrics " The less that you give you're a taker )

Glad to know Japan is giving so much, one way to promote Made In Japan products, it should also be noted that the rest of the world opens it's borders and accepts more refuges, something Japan has yet to learn!! so at the end of the day we can call it even.

Where is China and South Korea on this list?

How about your nation, the US? Shamefully low in the G7, only ahead of Italy.

Gave billions to the olympics so why not give more printed billions away and make everyone happy with a hug.

Japan is the second most populated country and the second largest economy in the G7, so it is normal that they give more money than Germany, France, Italy, the United Kingdom and Canada which are less populated and with smaller economy. The only special thing is that the USA which is first in population and economy gave so little. If we consider the size of the population, Germany gave the most and the USA the least.

Japan committed $5.1 billion in new aid funding last year, compared to $4.4 billion pledged by Germany, $1.9 billion by France and $1.0 billion by Canada, the study by Kiyoshi Kodera, a former Japanese Finance Ministry and World Bank official shows, citing data from the Overseas Development Institute, a British think tank.

Is it Aid or Loan ? The two are not the same.

Yeah, print some more yen.

Raising the money may currently be still possible, in kind of a last effort, but the task is surely impossible to do in those areas for several reasons and of course doubts in general surely are also growing. The budgets are now somehow limited, with deficits, costs for corona, olympic, urgent self defense projects, rebuilding disaster stricken areas, other global contribution, environmental and climate related, efforts to keep economic level in IT, newly eyed enforcement of chip or e-car production and such other changes in economy, all under problems of an aging society and probably therefore less potential for higher education and following inventions that can be sold on the global market. I guess, it’s something like ‘now or never’.

Where is China and South Korea on this list?

Exactly as Hiro writes - we should sort out the situation here first and not just give to foreign countries. So far, we have a dismal vaccination rate and reaction time to anything. So far we have given some 15 million doses of vaccines to third world countries. These vaccines were bought with our money, our taxpayers' money. And then they were just given away.

I have no problem with helping those in need. But not at the expense of the situation here. So let's deal with the situation here first and then play messiah.

I am not sure being on the top of that list is considered something to be proud of. Most people probably see it throwing money into the ocean. Our medical health system is on the collapse here while so many people lost their income when the service industry got hit.

And with the damn weather plus covid, the last thing i want to hear is government giving away cash to other countries.