P.M. BRIEFING : Japanese Press for Rice Import

Japan should offer to liberalize its closed rice market before the scheduled end of global trade talks in December, a group of 20 top Japanese academics said today.

“It’s time to play our own card on reform, because if the current talks on reforming farm trade fail to bear fruit, Japan’s farm sector will receive a major blow,” Yujiro Hayami, professor of international economics at Aoyama Gakuin University and chairman of the Forum for Policy Innovation, told reporters.

Japan has come under heavy international criticism for its ban on all commercial imports of rice, which it defends on the ground that it must remain self-sufficient in the national staple grain for security reasons.

The academics proposed that Japan start liberalizing by importing 200,000 tons, or 2% of its total annual demand, in 1992, and that this quota be increased by 10% a year to 300,000 tons.