May 31, 2003	Saturday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 28, 1424

TOKYO, May 30: Japan’s Food Agency said on Friday it had bought 13,098 tons of foreign rice at its import tender for the current fiscal year to next March under the simultaneous buy and sell (SBS) system.

Shipment is set by August 29, an agency official said. Of the total, the agency had bought 2,500 tons for broken rice, he said.

It bought 3,571 tons from US, 1,330 tons from Australia, 36 tons from India, 100 tons from Pakistan, 172 tons from Thailand, 7,869 tons from China, and 20 tons from Vietnam,

The tender was the first of four rounds of import tenders for rice under the SBS system that the agency plans for the current fiscal year to next March.

The agency, the government’s trading arm for key grains, holds two forms of rice import tenders — ordinary tenders and simultaneous buy and sell (SBS) tenders — in line with world trade agreements made in 1993.

In the 2003/04 year, the agency is obliged to buy a total of 770,000 tons of foreign rice on a brown rice basis in line with the 1993 agreements.—Reuters