Visiting Vietnamese Planning and Investment Minister Vo Hong Phuc (L) meets with Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso in Tokyo Monday.

Japan will resume providing official development assistance (ODA) to Vietnam, Japanese Foreign Minister Hirofumi Nakasone said Monday.

Meanwhile, the Reuters newswire service quoted Japanese foreign ministry official Kozo Honsei as saying the resumption of aid followed the finalization of an anticorruption measures report and the arrest of those involved on the Vietnamese side.

Honsei was referring to the arrest this month of two senior transportation officials implicated in the bribery scandal related to the East-West Highway and Water Environment project.

Huynh Ngoc Si, former head of the project, and his deputy Le Qua were arrested on February 11, and charged with “abuse of power.”

Si and Qua oversaw the East-West Highway Project in which Tokyo-based Pacific Consultants International (PCI) had been selected as the consultant contractor.

The duo have been charged with wrongdoing in leasing and spending rent collected for a house in Ho Chi Minh City’s District 3 leased to PCI from August 2001 to November 2002.

In November 2008, The Japanese daily Yomiuri newspaper reported four PCI executives had admitted to bribing Si with US$2.6 million between 2002 and 2006 in exchange for helping the company win the consulting contract on the project, funded with Japanese ODA. However, prosecutors could only establish a criminal case for bribes totaling $820,000 that were handed over to Si in 2003 and 2006.

At the World Bank Consultative Group meeting in Hanoi on December 4, Japan had said it would suspend ODA loans to Vietnam pending further investigation into the case.

After the meeting, Phuc said that Japan plans to provide financial aid of about 83.2 billion yen ($900 million) this year. The funds are to be used for a subway project and a drainage project in Hanoi; a drainage and environmental hygiene project in the northern port city of Hai Phong; and another project to upgrade bridges and roads in other parts of the country.

Reuters reports that while the Vietnamese side was hoping to sign yen loan deals by the end of March, exact dates were not available from the Japanese foreign ministry.

Japan, the world’s second-largest economy, provided about $1 billion in yen loans to Vietnam in the financial year ending March 2008.

Source: TN, Agencies