Tokyo, April 11 - Japan plans to ship 25 tonnes of quality rice to China, the world's No.1 market, by June after the two nations signed an accord ending a trade dispute which had halted rice exports since 2003, farm ministry officials said on Wednesday.
The agreement on a ministerial level, including holding regular bilateral meetings on farm trade, came as a prologue to an April 11-13 visit by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, the first visit to Japan by a Chinese leader in seven years.
China had halted rice imports from Japan after it revised its quarantine guidelines, citing concerns that harmful insects whose habitat was rice mills and storage depots might enter the country through rice shipments.
Under the new agreement, signed earlier on Wednesday, Chinese quarantine authorities will give approval to each rice mill seeking to export to China after the Japanese farm ministry specifies the mills for such exports, the officials said.
Prior to the 2003 ban, Japan's rice exports to China were at most 2 tonnes a year.
Yoshitsugu Minagawa, direct-general of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries' staple food department, said Japan hopes to attract the growing rich in China to quality sticky rice from Japan, which would cost about 10 times more than locally grown long grain rice.
"It is feasible to export to the potentially huge market," Minagawa said at a news conference.
"The demand is there. So it's time to get things done. I think promotion is a key to expand the market, with efforts needed by both private and public sectors," he said.
He said Japanese rice could follow the example of salmon from Norway, which is now available chilled even in inland China after a joint project by the government and Norwegian businesses in the past few years.
So far, Zen-Noh, the National Federation of Agricultural Cooperative Associations, is the sole entity preparing to export rice to China. Zen-Noh is the biggest wholesaler of domestically grown rice in Japan.
Chinese grain trader and processor China National Cereals, Oils and Food-stuffs Import & Export Corp. (COFCO) is in charge of sales there, the officials said.