Period (Date of Exchange of Notes (E/N)):
    February 27, 2005

Place:
    Nationwide

Amount Provided:
    380 million yen (about US$ 3.55 million / Rp 28.3 billion)

Outline:
Poverty alleviation has been one of the major directions in Japan's Official Development Assistance Strategy to Indonesia, and the Japanese Government has been mobilizing its ODA scheme, mainly through grant aid, to support the Indonesian Government's effort to reduce poverty for many years. Currently the Indonesian Government is strengthening its effort to promote well-balanced usage of good quality fertilizers among farmers in order to increase productivity of rice which is the staple food in Indonesia.

Under this Japanese grant aid, it is designed to assist the Indonesian Government in purchasing MOP (fertilizer of potassium chloride) which could not be procured in Indonesia, thus contributing to the improvement of rice productivity and the increase of farmers' income mainly in poor agriculture areas through distribution of good quality and relatively inexpensive fertilizers and through introduction of a model method of using fertilizers. It is also designed to utilize the counterpart fund, which would be accumulated through selling MOP in the domestic market, for supporting small scale farmers and for alleviating poverty in rural areas.