Japan's Agriculture Ministry will hold an import tender on June 13 for 33,000 tonnes of feed wheat and 317,000 tonnes of feed barley under the simultaneous buy and sell (SBS) system, a ministry official said on Tuesday. Shipment must be made between the time the contract is finalised and September 30, she said.
It will be the third SBS tender for supplies of foreign-origin feed wheat and feed barley for the fiscal year started in April. Japan controls imports of feed wheat and feed barley to help subsidise local farmers of key agriculture produce. Japan's food self-sufficiency rate stands at 40 percent on a calorie basis, one of the lowest among industrialised nations.
The ministry has said it plans to buy a total of 200,000 tonnes of feed wheat and 1.41 million tonnes of feed barley for fiscal 2007/08. The remaining amount for Japan to import in upcoming tenders would total some 175,000 tonnes of feed wheat and some 1 million tonnes of feed barley.
In the first two tenders in February and in April, the ministry bought a total 24,785 tonnes of feed wheat and a total 363,480 tonnes of feed barley. In ordinary tenders held weekly for imported food wheat and food barley, the only bidders are licensed trading firms.
In the SBS tenders, trading firms and end-users, acting together, can directly negotiate on the grain's origin, price and quantity before placing a bid. The bid price should include the marked-up fee that the government uses to pay for storage and other costs and to subsidise local farmers.