Japan's Ministry of Agriculture seeks to buy 25,000 tonnes of foreign rice, for use mostly as table rice, at a tender under the simultaneous buy and sell (SBS) system on August 24, a ministry official said on Tuesday.
Shipment must be made between the time the contract is finalised and December 14, the official said. It will be the second SBS tender for foreign rice in the current fiscal year to next March. In the first SBS tender in June the ministry bought 25,000 tonnes of rice, of which about 80 percent was Chinese origin. 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 plans to buy 770,000 tonnes of foreign rice on a brown rice basis in fiscal 2007/08 to supplement the domestic harvest. The volume is unchanged from a year and in line with world trade agreements. Of that total, it plans to buy 100,000 tonnes through SBS tenders, unchanged from the previous year, and the remainder through ordinary tenders.
In SBS tenders, users are allowed to negotiate directly with trading firms and decide the grain's origin, price and quantity before together placing a bid to the government. Rice imported under ordinary tenders is mainly used for processed food and alcohol.