On 29 October 2009, Crown Agents attended a ceremony at Ibn Sena Hospital in Baghdad to mark the handover of the final 312 ambulances out of 1012 supplied to Iraq by the Government of Japan.
Dr Amer Al-Kuzai, Senior Deputy Minister, representing the Minister of Health, handed over a letter of thanks to Mr Katsuhiko Takahashi - Deputy Chief of Mission of the Embassy of Japan in Baghdad.
The 312 ambulances procured by JICS under the second phase were shipped to Um Qasr Port by the Japanese supplier. The Crown Agents team in the port monitored the customs clearance process and the distribution of the ambulances throughout the 19 Governorates in Iraq.
The 5,830,338,000 Japanese Yen grant to the Iraqi Ministry of Health was part of Japan's Emergency Grant Aid programme to Iraq for which Crown Agents provides security and logistics support to the procurement agent, Japan International Cooperation System (JICS).
This grant was one of nine equipment grants totalling JPY 22,123,003,000 in value out of JPY 95,274,254,000 of bilateral grants awarded by Japan to Iraq from the pledge made at the Madrid Donors' Conference in October 2003.
The ceremony was organised by the Embassy of Japan, the Ministry of Health and members of the JICS/Crown Agents team who also attended the ceremony: Mr Yoshinari Oshima, Secretary General of JICS and JICS' Programme Manager, Mr Shunichi Kudo, as well as Mr Jon Walden from Crown Agents.