ABSTRACT
Projects were the ‘building blocks’ of Japanese aid policy and, as earlier chapters have suggested, provided aid administrators with a fixed standard for procedures and a tangible monument to officials’ efforts. Projects were visible and measurable; given the problems of coordination faced by the bureaucracy and the complexity of procedures, project aid (which formed the bulk of Japanese bilateral assistance) gave a concrete form to requests and to the long process from identifying projects through to approving and implementing the aid programme.1
