Japan will support Malaysia's rare earth refining with ODA.

The Japanese government will begin providing technical support to Malaysia related to rare earth mining. The plan is to provide geological survey equipment through a Government Development Assistance (ODA) project, and to advance cooperation on rare earth refining technologies that prioritize environmental protection. This move aims to help Malaysia, which has abundant rare earth reserves, build a production base and diversify rare earth procurement channels.

This is the first time Japan and Malaysia have launched technical cooperation in the field of rare earth mining through ODA between the two countries. The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) dispatched experts from February to Malaysia in fields such as resource geology and environmental chemistry to help kick off the project.

At present, technical personnel and others from Japan and Malaysia are communicating and coordinating regarding the project objectives. The Japanese side also plans to invite about 10 technical personnel from Malaysia in fields such as mineral processing to train in Japan.

To continue reading, please click here to go to the Nikkei Chinese website

Nikkei Inc. and the Financial Times merged into the same media group in November 2015. An alliance formed by two newspaper publishers—the Japanese and British newspapers that were also founded in the 19th century—is moving forward with “high-quality, the most powerful business journalism” as its banner, and is promoting broad-area collaboration such as joint special reports. This time, as part of that effort, the two newspapers have exchanged articles between their Chinese-language websites.