The Ministry of Agriculture plans to buy a total 118,000 tonnes of foreign rice for processed food and alcohol use in a regular tender closing on Friday, a ministry official said on Monday. Of the total, the ministry is seeking 40,000 tonnes of Thai rice, 39,000 tonnes of US rice and the remaining 39,000 tonnes of any origin.
Shipment for the Naha port in Okinawa, southern Japan, of 5,000 tonnes of Thai rice is due between March 15 and April 15, and shipments for the remaining 113,000 tonnes are due between March 25 and April 30, the official said.
In the previous tender on December 7, the ministry bought 30,000 tonnes of Thai rice at a weighted average price of 51,818 yen ($457.30) per tonne. The accepted amount was short of a planned 40,000 tonnes of Thai rice as there were insufficient bids for 10,000 tonnes. The official said Friday's tender would be the ministry's last tender for foreign rice this month, and the sixth ordinary rice tender in the fiscal year to March next year.
The ministry bought a total 254,000 tonnes in the past five ordinary tenders -- 143,000 tonnes of US rice, 90,000 tonnes of Thai rice and 21,000 tonnes of Vietnam rice. Japan keeps a tight grip on imports of rice, the country's staple food, as its food self-sufficiency rate is one of the lowest among industrialised nations.
The ministry also buys foreign rice via a tender under the more flexible simultaneous buy and sell (SBS) system, which allows buyers to negotiate the grain's origin, price and quantity with licensed trading houses before jointly placing bids to the government.
Through the past three SBS tenders, the ministry bought a total of 70,092 tonnes of foreign rice -- 51,020 tonnes from China, 17,702 tonnes from the United States, 1,178 tonnes from Thailand, 120 tonnes from Pakistan and 72 tonnes from India.
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