Media release

The Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Trade, Tim Fischer

22 December, 1998

Minimum Access Rice Guarantee

Japanese officials have confirmed that Japan will continue to treat its obli

gation on minimum access rice as a 'guaranteed purchasing commitment'. The confirmation was given as officials met to discuss the Japanese decision on rice tariffication in Canberra yesterday.

"The confirmation assures Japan's guaranteed purchase of foreign rice will increase to 682,200 tonnes by the year 2000," the Minister for Trade, Tim Fischer, said.

"The import of rice outside this special treatment will be subject to a specific duty of 351 yen (almost $5) per kilo which is equivalent to about 390 percent on imports of Australian rice.

"This is about 15 times higher than the highest tariff applied by Australia to any of our imports from Japan or elsewhere."

Mr Fischer said Australia had stressed the point that while the move to tariffication is in the right direction "the tariff levels applied to outside quota imports are excessively high".

"They send an unfortunate signal to Japanese trading partners in a difficult international economic environment."

Commenting on media reports that suggested Japan would resist further negotiations in the WTO aimed at opening up agricultural markets, Mr Fischer said: "I am pleased that Japanese officials have confirmed that their government remains committed to the scheduled commencement of further negotiations in Geneva under the WTO'

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Local Date: Wednesday, 07-Jan-2009 22:26:05 EST