Lanka seeks rice from Japan

Sri Lanka has asked Japan whether it can buy up to 200,000 tonnes of rice which Tokyo has to import under a world trade agreement scheme, Japanese Government officials said yesterday.

The request came after Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda told world leaders at a UN food security summit in Rome yesterday that Japan would release at least 300,000 tonnes of imported rice from storage onto the world market to help ease a global food crisis.

Japan’s Government has stored 1.52 million tonnes of foreign rice. U.S. and Japanese officials agreed in a meeting in Washington late last month that quick action was needed to address global hunger and bring stability to the world rice market.

Given that about half of the compulsory imports are from the United States, the agreement has paved the way for Tokyo to use the rice to meet obligations under multilateral trade agreements while protecting Japanese farmers by imposing high tariffs on commercial rice imports.

“Sri Lanka’s government has made an inquiry concerning its possible purchase of rice Japan imports within the minimum access window,” a Japanese foreign ministry official said, Thomson

Reuters