Hanoi (VNA), March 27 -- Deputy Prime Minister Tran Luu Quang received Executive Senior Vice President of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) Yamada Junichi in Hanoi on March 26.

Welcoming the JICA official to Vietnam to attend the launch of the first phase of the Vietnam-Japan joint initiative in the new era, Deputy PM Quang briefed the guest on Vietnam's national budget management mechanisms as well as the country's recent efforts to remove difficulties and obstacles to speed up the progress of projects using Japanese ODA.

For his part, Yamada said that recently, Japan's ODA disbursement rate has increased significantly, with the amount of slow disbursement at about 1.8 billion JPY (11.86 million USD), much lower than th...