Rice released from Japan's reserves in 2025 through discretionary contracts took as long as 310 days to reach retailers and other buyers, the Board of Audit found. Under the general competitive bidding that ran alongside it, about 90% had arrived by the end of August 2025, the deadline the government set for itself.
Discretionary contracts, which sell rice to retailers at a preset price, were meant to get cheaper rice to consumers faster. The board attributed the delay to inspections and other checks that the older grain required before it could move.
The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries buys about 200,000 tons of rice a year and stores it for roughly five years, normally selling it on as feed. Rice prices surged, and from March 2025 the ministry released about 590,000 tons of brown rice.
Bidding cleared the deadline; contracts did not
The March and April competitive tenders covered 312,000 tons of 2023 and 2024 brown rice, or 272,000 tons once milled. It sold to collectors an average of 57.6 days after the tender notice, and by the end of August about 251,000 tons milled, roughly 90%, had reached retailers and other buyers.
The discretionary sales, which the government decided on in May, covered 279,000 tons of 2021 and 2022 brown rice. An average of 72.2 days passed between a retailer's application and the sale. Only 184,000 tons, or 66%, had been sold by the August 20 target, and the last of the stock did not clear until the end of March 2026.
The government had never released reserve rice on this scale before, which left it without a tested procedure for moving old stock quickly.