When Japan introduced a controversial tariff scheme for its rice imports in April 1999, it was like a train departing before all passengers were on board.
Although Japan has kept the new scheme running under domestic laws, it has so far failed to officially get the green light from the World Trade Organization, the Geneva-based watchdog on global commerce, because of objections from some agriculture-exporting countries.
But the two-year-old scheme -- under which prohibitively high import duties were imposed on foreign rice to protect politically powerful domestic growers -- is finally expected to be recognized by the international trading community as a legal trading regime this spring, according to government sources.