Yoshio Yatsu, head of the Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry, will go to Europe next week to discuss a plan to slow growth in mandated rice imports into Japan with the World Trade Organization chief, ministry officials said Tuesday.
Yatsu is expected to explain to WTO Director General Mike Moore a proposal put forward by Tokyo in December to slow the pace of expansion in mandated imports to protect Japanese rice farmers from cheap foreign rice.
Japan submitted agricultural trade proposals to the WTO in December ahead of a decision on how liberalization in the area should be negotiated, which is expected around March.
Yatsu will leave Tokyo on Sunday and travel to Brussels, Geneva and Rome. He is also to hold talks with the heads of the European Union and the Food and Agriculture Organization, the ministry said.
In an accord that concluded the Uruguay Round of multilateral trade negotiations in 1993, Japan pledged to open its rice market to imports and committed itself to granting "minimum access" to foreign rice for six years beginning in 1995.
The Uruguay Round agreement obliged Japan to import 4 percent of domestic rice demand in 1995 and to gradually increase that to about 8 percent by 2000. But Japan instead introduced a flat tariff of 351.17 yen per kg in April 1999 and cut it to 341 yen a year later in a move to avoid increasing the minimum access level.
Japan is allowed to slow the pace of growth in mandated imports if it adopts tariffs before fiscal 2001.
Yatsu is scheduled to return to Tokyo on Jan. 20.