only four percent of this land available for constant farming. It may be diffic
ult to enlarge the agricultural land subject to the constant cropping and farmi
ng around the year. What can we can do is to enhance or increase the per hectar
e yield in the paddy rice field. As I mentioned in my presentation, we have to
provide the stable irrigation. Currently only two percent of the paddy rice are
a is subject to palmtop or the artificial irrigation. The remalning 98 percent
depends upon the natural rainfall. Therefore we should provide the stable water
resource supply for the agricultural farming area through the artificial irriga
-tion, that will be regarded in the good accumulation of fertilizer, say the pr
oduct will be doubled, then the total food stuffs supply will be sufficient eno
ugh which will eliminate the means to import the food, at any rate. There are t
he good examples shown by the ad-vanced nations. So the Lao PDR set forward thi
s example. The issue is the budget, or the money. At the same time, the grants
and assistance from the foreign countries to Laos should be well accepted. Ther
e should be the local corumunity initiative, in cooperation with the ODA provid
ed by the foreign countries. There are the ways to be solved.
Question 2 (Dr. Vo Tong Xuan, MP, VIETNAM):
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to congratulate Professor Kawano for
his very good report on Laos. If you also consider serious input in the projects
th at is supported by the UNDP, World Bank and ADP. I think the international
dono rs helped put in a lot of money, but the result so far to Laos are very
small. This, I think, because of the biggest problem is the human resource
that Laos i s facing with. The capacity to absorb the aid would be very limited.
I have bee n to Laos several times under several international mis-sions,
and found that w ithout overcoming the human res_ource constraints, it will
be very difficult to move ahead. And, in talking about human resource, I think
most of the mis-sions lack the human ecology experts to understand the people.
Many of the projects g iven to Laos was imposed by the lowland people to the
upland people, the civili zed peo-ple to the mountainous people. So the mountainous
people, Lao Tsen and Lao Tsong, they would not accept the idea of the lowland
people. So in your for thcoming project, do you have such a vision in taking
care of the human aspects?
Dr. Kawano:
Thank you very much. I don't know if I can fully answer your question. The
huma n con-dition, yes, is very important. We have received many Laotians
to Japan. There is already 740 people trained in Japan. I don't know whether
they are eng ineers, experts or bureau-crats. But the question is, have they
really learned anything in Japan, are they taking the advantage, of the experiences
in Japan? They may say that their stay in Japan was not productive. I don't
know, but I w ould certainly like to hear their views, by learnlng from the
experience of the past, maybe we can do better. What is lacking right now
is follow-up, after the y have received training. We have not heard from the
trainees about their exper iences. The experts may argue that no matter how
many missions were sent to Lao s, no matter how many trainees were sent to
Japan, it did not help the country. If that is the case, what is the reason,
what is missing'? I think we must go i nto those specifically, we must go
step by step. As you said, the human aspect is very important, After all,
giv-
