The Japan Agricultural News implemented an interview-based survey on transactions of rice imported under “simultaneous buy and sell” (SBS) system, and revealed that all of trading houses, responding to the survey, took part in the so-called SBS rice business because “imported rice is cheaper than domestically-produced rice.”
The survey was carried out from October 13 to 21 for all of the 24 trading firms with qualifications for bidding under the SBS system, out of which 11 firms responded.
With regard to prices of transacted SBS rice, most common response was “SBS imported rice costs 20 percent less than domestic rice.”
On October 7, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) announced a result of its investigation regarding shady transactions of SBS imported rice by trading houses with so-called “adjustment money” paid to wholesalers.
MAFF’s investigation, however, concluded that those transactions had not served as factors to lower market prices of domestic rice without conducting more detailed investigation on trading companies’ prices set up for users of imported rice.
Difference between MAFF’s views and an actual state of the transactions has been clearly shown by the result of the Japan Agricultural News’ survey.
Out of 11 surveyed trading firms, 4 companies replied “market transaction prices of SBS rice are actually cheaper than those of domestic rice by 20 percent.” “Cheaper than domestic rice by 10 percent” was a reply made by two companies. There was also a reply that SBS rice imported from China costed less than domestic rice by 40 percent.