Long lines for cheap stockpiled rice sold directly to retail firms
Ito-Yokado Co.'s supermarket in Tokyo's Omori district was one of those outlets.
About 250 customers had lined up an hour or so before the supermarket opened at 10 a.m.
The first person in line, a man in his 40s, said he came to the outlet at 5:30 a.m.
He said he wanted to buy rice as cheaply as possible as it was an irreplaceable menu item.
Two outlets operated by the Iris Ohyama Inc. group also began selling the rice bought directly from the government.
Other major supermarkets were preparing to sell the rice at their outlets from June 1 and beyond.
Faced with mounting criticism that the government had failed to curb a spike in rice prices, Shinjiro Koizumi, the farm minister, switched the distribution of stockpiled rice from auctions to direct sales to retail companies. He said his aim was to provide 5-kilogram bags of rice for around 2,000 yen ($14).
According to the farm ministry, a total of 300,000 tons of rice harvested in the 2021-22 season will be directly sold to 61 retail companies that have signed contracts to purchase the rice and passed the evaluation screening.
On May 30, the ministry released figures which showed a slight improvement in the pace of stockpiled rice distributed through auctions reaching retail outlets.
It said 27,369 tons of rice distributed through auctions in March had reached retailers by May 11. The figure represents 12.9 percent of the total amount of rice released through auctions that month.
The figure was an improvement over the 7.1 percent from the April 27 study by the ministry.
But the release of stockpiled rice through auctions does not appear to have had the desired effect: lower rice prices.
The internal affairs ministry on May 30 released its statistics for rice prices in the 23 wards of Tokyo which showed 5 kg of the Koshihikari brand selling for 4,970 yen, 200 yen more than the previous week. That marked the 13th straight week of an increase in rice prices.
(This article was compiled from reports by Masashi Kisanuki, Ryo Oyama, Takumi Wakai, Hisashi Naito and Sho Ito.)
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