JICA Private Sector Partnership Funding 2026 The SME and SDGs Business Support Program and the Cooperative Preparatory Survey for Overseas Investment and Finance

If you run an eligible Japanese business or nonprofit organisation with a product that could solve a real problem in a developing country — a water treatment unit, a diagnostic device, a cold chain system, a road maintenance method — the Japan International Cooperation Agency can support you in finding out whether the business works. Not as a loan you repay, and not as a prize for a pitch deck. Depending on the route, JICA or a JICA-appointed consultant supports the work through a commissioned contract, eligible-cost assistance, business advice, and its country offices and government relationships.

This is JICA’s proposal-based private sector partnership work, and it runs through two doors that matter to most companies: the SME and SDGs Business Support Program, universally called JICA Biz, and the Cooperative Preparatory Survey (Overseas Investment and Finance). They serve different stages of the same journey. JICA Biz is for testing whether a business idea holds up in an unfamiliar market. The Cooperative Preparatory Survey is for companies far enough along to be planning an actual investment, and who want JICA’s finance arm behind it.

One thing to be clear about before you read further: these programs are for eligible Japanese legal entities proposing projects overseas. JICA Biz includes specified nonprofit corporations and SME associations; the Cooperative Preparatory Survey requires a Japan-registered corporation as representative proposer. They are not application windows for a partner-country ministry to enter alone. If you sit on the receiving side, your route is partnership, and the FAQ explains the limited joint-proposal exception.

JICA Private Sector Partnership Funding at a Glance

Where the FY2026 Cycle Actually Stands

The two JICA routes are in different states. The metadata deadline is rolling because one of the two routes is accepting proposals without a fixed closing date; it does not mean that the JICA Biz notice is open.

The FY2026 Cooperative Preparatory Survey (Overseas Investment and Finance) is accepting proposals at any time. JICA published the announcement on 10 April 2026. Its recruitment guidelines state that proposal submission is “随時” — at any time — and give no closing date. The announcement page, guidelines, forms, and contact details are at https://www.jica.go.jp/about/announce/psiffs/2026/index.html. The guidelines also say the survey period itself has no fixed limit, while the proposed contract and deliverables are agreed for each project.

The FY2026 JICA Biz call is not formally published yet. JICA’s announcements page still links the 2025 JICA Biz notice, while its current FY2026 material is a recruitment briefing rather than an application notice. That briefing, held on 15 May 2026, gives a planning timetable: a pre-announcement was planned for 3 August 2026, pre-consultation requests were planned to close on 19 August 2026 at 17:00, the formal notice was planned for 1 September 2026, and proposals were planned to close on 30 September 2026. These are explicitly planned dates from the briefing, not a live call deadline. They must be checked against the formal notice before anyone submits.

JICA also published online preparation sessions for 6, 8, and 10 July 2026. Those sessions help applicants prepare, but attending them does not open an application window or replace the required 2026 notice and forms. The practical position is therefore clear: a Cooperative Preparatory Survey proposal can be prepared and submitted now; a JICA Biz proposal should be drafted against the briefing, then rechecked against the formal notice when it appears.

For context, the previous JICA Biz round was posted on 1 September 2025, and JICA announced its adopted projects on 22 December 2025. Those dates explain why the 2026 briefing points toward an autumn process, but they are historical schedule evidence, not a substitute for the 2026 notice.

JICA Biz: Two Steps, Not One Big Leap

The design of JICA Biz reflects something obvious that most funding programs ignore: a company entering an unfamiliar market does not yet know what it does not know. So the program splits into two stages, and the second assumes you learned something in the first.

Needs Confirmation Survey — up to JPY 15 million

This is the reconnaissance stage. You go in with a hypothesis: our product solves this problem for these users in this country. The survey exists to test that hypothesis against reality — gathering baseline information on the target country, checking whether the development need you assumed actually exists in the form you assumed, and confirming whether your product or service matches the customers you have in mind. The ceiling is JPY 15 million excluding tax, and the survey runs for up to 12 months.

Companies at this stage often discover their real business is not the one they proposed. That is a successful outcome, not a failed one. Finding out that the buyer is a municipal utility rather than a private clinic, or that the binding constraint is maintenance rather than capital cost, is exactly what the money is for.

Business Demonstration Project — up to JPY 40 million

This is where the business model gets sharpened into a plan. The stage is for confirming that customers actually accept the product, securing local partners, refining the business model, and testing whether the numbers work. The ceiling is JPY 40 million excluding tax, and the project can run for up to two years and six months.

The progression is real, not theoretical. In the FY2025 round, five of the adopted Business Demonstration Projects came from companies that had already been supported for a Needs Confirmation Survey in FY2023 or FY2024. If you are early, entering at the first stage is not a lesser ambition — it is the intended path. For FY2026, the briefing identifies the Needs Confirmation Survey applicants as small, medium-sized, and non-profit organisations and SME associations; the Business Demonstration Project also includes large enterprises. The exact legal and financial tests are set out in the formal notice, which had not yet been posted at the time of this review.

The Cooperative Preparatory Survey (Overseas Investment and Finance)

This scheme, formerly known as the Cooperative Preparatory Survey for PPP Infrastructure Projects, sits further downstream and thinks in much larger numbers.

Its purpose is to prepare business plans for private-sector projects that JICA might then support through overseas investment and finance — JICA’s equity and loan window for private ventures in developing countries. The representative proposer must be a corporation registered in Japan. A foreign corporation may join a joint proposal only where JICA considers its experience, ability, and intention indispensable to the project’s feasibility; a non-profit corporation or local government cannot be the representative applicant under this survey. Proposals need to contribute to the economic and social development, recovery, or economic stability of the partner country, align with Japanese government and JICA policy, be plausible candidates for overseas investment or loans, and — this is the part that filters hardest — involve the proposing company’s own investment participation in the project. You are not proposing a study detached from a business decision. You are proposing to put your own capital into the eventual project and asking JICA to support the work that makes that decision possible.

The cost ceilings reflect the scale of what is being prepared: up to JPY 30 million for a preliminary survey, and up to JPY 150 million for a full-scale survey with the preliminary cost deducted where one was carried out, or up to JPY 120 million where the work goes straight to full scale. Those figures include consumption tax. JICA funds the survey through an outsourcing contract rather than handing over an unrestricted grant.

What the FY2025 Results Tell You About Your Odds

JICA announced 62 adopted projects in the FY2025 JICA Biz round on 22 December 2025 — 47 Needs Confirmation Surveys and 15 Business Demonstration Projects. Sixty of the 62 supported small and medium-sized enterprises. That ratio matters: this is not a program that quietly favours large trading houses.

The regional split of adopted projects was Southeast Asia and Oceania 48.4 percent, Africa 17.7 percent, Central and South America 12.9 percent, South Asia 11.3 percent, East and Central Asia 6.5 percent, and the Middle East and Europe 3.2 percent. By sector, agriculture led at 22.6 percent, followed by healthcare at 16.1 percent, infrastructure and transport at 14.5 percent, and disaster prevention at 12.9 percent.

Read those numbers as a map of where JICA’s country offices already have relationships and unmet needs on file. A proposal aimed at a country and sector where JICA is already active starts with the advantage of a local office that recognises the problem you are describing.

How to Build a Proposal That Survives Review

Start from the development problem, not the product. The reviewer’s first question is what problem in the partner country your business solves. A proposal that opens with your company’s technical specifications and works backwards to a justification reads exactly like what it is. Open with the constraint people in that country actually face, then show why your approach addresses it.

Talk to the JICA overseas office early. JICA’s country offices maintain a working sense of what partner governments need and what has already been tried. A concept that has been informally sanity-checked against that knowledge is a stronger concept, and the conversation costs you nothing but time.

Be honest that you might be wrong. The Needs Confirmation Survey exists precisely because hypotheses fail. A proposal that states its assumptions plainly and describes how the survey will test them is more convincing than one asserting certainty about a market the applicant has never operated in.

Show a business, not a donation. JICA Biz is not corporate social responsibility funding. The programs assume you intend to run a commercially viable operation. Say who pays, what they pay, and why the arrangement holds up after JICA’s support ends.

Budget for what is allowed. The recruitment guidelines break eligible costs into categories, and there are sub-limits inside them. Read the 募集要項 for the current round rather than assuming last year’s rules carry over, and build the budget against those categories from the start rather than reshaping it at the end.

Use the briefing materials. JICA publishes recordings and slides from its recruitment briefings — the FY2026 JICA Biz session from 15 May 2026 is among them. These sessions cover the specifics of the current round’s requirements and are the cheapest preparation available.

Materials to Prepare

The current Cooperative Preparatory Survey guidelines identify the documents and route, while the FY2026 JICA Biz forms remain pending until the formal notice. Prepare the following without treating an old form as current:

• For the Cooperative Preparatory Survey: JICA’s Form 5 competition application, the proposal form for either the preliminary or full-scale survey, Form 1 cost breakdown, Forms 3 and 4 for personnel histories and the work plan, Form 6 proposer information, the screening form, and the other forms listed on the 2026 announcement page.
• Corporate evidence: the latest three years of financial statements, a copy of the current corporate registry certificate issued within three months, and a tax certificate showing no unpaid corporate, consumption, or local consumption tax. A listed company may omit financial statements where the guidelines allow it.
• A project and investment case: the business structure, the proposing corporation’s role and capital participation, a provisional funding plan and cash-flow model, the expected use of JICA overseas investment or finance, and a schedule for the preliminary or full-scale investigation.
• Safety and counterpart evidence: the target country’s safety conditions, any government or implementing-agency willingness required for the proposal, and the planned approach to environmental and social considerations. Countries or areas under Japan’s overseas safety level 3 or 4 are excluded from this survey.
• For JICA Biz: the 2026 notice’s consent form, scheme-specific proposal, cost estimate, and any financial-institution confirmation or appendices. The 15 May briefing says applicants must use the documents attached on the formal notice date, not the 2025 templates.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can a non-Japanese organisation apply directly?

Usually not as the applicant of record. JICA Biz is for eligible Japanese legal entities, including non-profit corporations and SME associations, and the Cooperative Preparatory Survey requires a Japan-registered corporation as representative proposer. The latter can include a foreign corporation in a joint proposal only when JICA judges its experience, ability, and intention indispensable to feasibility. A partner-country agency, local company, or international NGO will more commonly participate as a local counterpart, customer, implementing partner, or joint-proposal member where the rules permit; it should not assume that it can submit alone.

Does the money come as a cash grant?

Not in the ordinary sense. JICA funds these activities under contract, covering eligible costs up to the stated ceiling, with the associated reporting and procurement rules. Budget your internal time accordingly.

Are the JICA Biz ceilings inclusive of tax?

The JICA Biz ceilings — JPY 15 million and JPY 40 million — are stated excluding tax. The Cooperative Preparatory Survey ceilings are stated with consumption tax included. Confirm against the current notice before finalising a budget.

What if we do not fit either scheme?

JICA’s private sector partnership work extends beyond these two schemes, and the announcements page carries other calls through the year. The English overview at https://www.jica.go.jp/english/activities/schemes/priv_partner/index.html is the starting point for the wider set.

When will the FY2026 JICA Biz deadline be announced?

JICA’s 15 May briefing planned a 1 September 2026 notice and a 30 September 2026 proposal deadline, but the briefing labels those dates as planned. They are useful preparation markers, not confirmed application dates. The formal notice and its attached forms remain authoritative. By contrast, the FY2026 Cooperative Preparatory Survey is already accepting submissions at any time and has no fixed closing date.

How to Apply and Next Steps

1. Check the announcements page first. https://www.jica.go.jp/activities/schemes/priv_partner/announce/index.html is JICA’s hub for live notices. The linked 2026 Cooperative Preparatory Survey page is the operative source for that route; the JICA Biz page must be revisited when the 2026 notice is posted.

2. Choose the stage and confirm the applicant category. Use JICA’s corporate classification system. Choose Needs Confirmation Survey for an early business-model hypothesis, Business Demonstration Project for a more developed model requiring customer acceptance and operating proof, or Cooperative Preparatory Survey when the Japanese proposer intends to invest in and lead an overseas project that may use JICA finance.

3. For the Cooperative Preparatory Survey, request pre-consultation if useful. Email [email protected] with the project country, project outline, and intended use of overseas investment or finance. The guidelines say pre-consultation is available at any time. This is a discussion with the responsible JICA division, not an application substitute.

4. Submit the Cooperative Preparatory Survey proposal at any time. Use the 2026 forms and submit by post, in person, or through JICA’s GIGAPOD process as specified in the guidelines. The proposal is evaluated by JICA departments and external bodies; JICA may interview the proposer. Selection typically takes about two to four months after submission, followed by counterpart-government consent and contract negotiation.

5. For JICA Biz, wait for the formal 2026 notice. The briefing’s planned markers were 3 August for a pre-announcement, 19 August at 17:00 for pre-consultation requests, 1 September for the notice, and 30 September for the proposal close. Until JICA posts the notice, do not submit a 2025 form or treat these planned dates as fixed.

6. Prepare the evidence reviewers will test. Show product or service sales evidence, a clear development problem, target-country and customer logic, an implementable survey plan, an accountable team, financial capacity, and why JICA support is needed. For a Business Demonstration Project, include evidence of customer or partner conversations and a credible route to an operating business after the support period.

7. Use the right contact window. JICA Biz questions go to [email protected] or 03-5226-3491, weekdays 9:30 to 17:45. Cooperative Preparatory Survey questions go to [email protected] or +81-3-5226-3489. Read the current FAQ and any answers posted after questions before submitting.

The Cooperative Preparatory Survey is therefore a live, rolling opportunity with no single deadline to enter in the page metadata. JICA Biz is a forthcoming FY2026 call with a published planning timetable but no formal application notice yet. That distinction is the important update: applicants can act now on the investment-survey route, while JICA Biz applicants should use the preparation period and wait for the official forms and final dates.

Official announcements: https://www.jica.go.jp/activities/schemes/priv_partner/announce/index.html

English overview: https://www.jica.go.jp/english/activities/schemes/priv_partner/index.html