The agriculture ministry on Wednesday started accepting applications from retailers hoping to procure a newly announced batch of government-stockpiled rice earmarked for release under no-bid contracts.

The latest round of applications for discretionary contracts will cover a total of some 120,000 metric tons of stockpiled rice produced in 2021 — including 20,000 tons was unsold after the ministry started accepting applications from small and midsize supermarkets in late May.

Once the 2021 rice is sold out, the ministry plans to release 100,000 tons of stockpiled rice from the 2020 harvest. It is the first time that the government has decided to release 2020 rice.

For the sale of stockpiled rice under discretionary contracts, the ministry started accepting applications from large retailers on May 26 and from smaller retailers on May 30 under sales volume quotas set for the respective groups.

This time, the ministry is accepting applications from a wide range of retailers, ranging from rice stores with milling capacity to large-scale retailers handling more than 10,000 tons of rice per year.

Agriculture minister Shinjiro Koizumi said that the government is eager to provide stockpiled rice to retailers who can sell it promptly to customers.

Retailers who have previously signed discretionary contracts to procure stockpiled rice can apply again, but only for amounts of rice that they will be able to sell by August. No upper limit for volume has been set.

The ministry expects retail prices to be around ¥1,800 per 5-kilogram bag of 2021 rice, and around ¥1,700 per bag for 2020 rice.

A sale of all batches would take the total amount of stockpiled rice released by the government since March to 810,000 tons, and leave the stockpile with about 100,000 tons.

Koizumi has said that the remaining amount would be sufficient even in the event of a major natural disaster or other crises.