Japan pauses stockpile sales as retailers snap up rice

Japan paused its sale of rice reserves after seeing a fast response from retailers, in a positive sign for the government’s efforts to temper soaring rice prices and ease consumers’ cost-of-living concerns ahead of an election this summer.Major players, including Rakuten Group Inc. and Pan Pacific International Holdings Corp., the parent company of popular discount store Don Quijote, were among the 70 retailers to secure a portion of the 200,000 metric tons of the staple grain on sale Tuesday, according to the Ministry of Agriculture.

The rush to snap up the reserves usually stored for natural disasters comes as the government tries to assuage the impact of inflation on households, which have seen rice prices nearly double over the past year, ahead of an upper house election that could be punishing for Shigeru Ishiba’s minority government.

Agriculture Minister Shinjiro Koizumi told reporters late on Tuesday that he was “very grateful” for the response and the speed at which retailers bought up the rice, adding that he hoped the next round of sales could start on Friday.The government is set to unload a total of 300,000 tons of stockpiled rice with a fixed wholesale price of about ¥10,000 ($69) per 60 kilograms, instead of auctioning it as had been done in earlier reserve releases. Koizumi has said that he hoped selling directly to retailers at a set price would halve the current rice price for consumers of more than ¥4,000 per 5 kilograms to around ¥2,000.

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