Amid high prices for rice resulting from supply bottlenecks, the government said Friday it will start releasing 210,000 metric tons of the staple grain from its emergency stockpile in March in the hopes of improving the situation in the Japanese market.
This will be the first time for the government to tap its stockpile to reduce prices instead of due to emergencies such as rice shortages stemming from extremely poor harvests or natural disasters.
“The rice has been well produced by farmers. There should definitely be enough rice in the country to meet the demand,” said agriculture minister Taku Eto in a news conference on Friday. “However, there is a bottleneck in the distribution system, and because of that, (rice) can only be offered to consumers at a high price.”
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