Lumber sent from prefectures that received government subsidies to supply wood to areas hit by the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami in 2011 only amounted to 0.04 percent of their total shipments in fiscal 2012 and 2013, according to a recent survey.
The Board of Audit of Japan survey scrutinized how the recipient prefectures spent the subsidies. The lumber supply project backed by Forestry Agency subsidies aimed to provide stable amounts of wood to the disaster-hit prefectures, including Aomori, Iwate, Miyagi, Fukushima, Ibaraki, Tochigi, Chiba, Niigata and Nagano.
The total amount of wood shipped to the disaster-hit recipients via direct deals or market bidding by 15 other prefectures that received the subsidies amounted to 9.4 million cu. meters.