On April 3, Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries announced tariff-rate quota (TRQ) volumes for dairy products during Japanese Fiscal Year 2023 (April to March). The announcement includes quotas for natural cheese for processing, skimmed milk powder, evaporated milk, butter and butter oil, as well as certain whey products. The quota volume for natural cheese for processing dropped six percent from JFY2022.
General Information:
On April 3, 2023, Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) announced tariff-rate quota (TRQ) volumes for dairy products that will be in effect during Japanese Fiscal Year (JFY) 2023 (April 1, 2023, to March 31, 2024). These TRQs operated by MAFF are separate from the designated dairy product TRQs operated by the Agriculture and Livestock Industries Corporation (ALIC), which were announced on January 27 (see JA2023-0032). See Table 1 below for the list of MAFF TRQs.
For the “natural cheese for processed cheese production” TRQ, each applicant (within Japan) is allowed to import natural cheese duty-free up to 2.5 times the volume of domestic cheese it uses for the production of processed cheese. The volume allocation for this TRQ was down 6 percent from JFY 2022 to 52,000 MT. While the TRQs for skimmed milk powder and butter and butter oil remained unchanged, volumes for sub-categories were adjusted based on MAFF’s projection of domestic demand and production (see Table 1 for the details). — By Aki Imaizumi, USDA Foreign Ag Service
Table 1: Japan’s Dairy TRQs for JFY 2023 Operated by MAFF
