On 19 January 2021, General Manager of the APTERR Secretariat Mr. Chanpithya Shimphalee and the APTERR staff participated in the virtual meeting with the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) of Japan represented by Director-General of Crop Production Bureau Mr. Takashi Amo together with Director of Grain Trade and Operation Division Mr. Hideki Hagiwara and his team.
The highlight of the meeting was the introduction of a candidate for a next Japanese expert, Mr. Toshiki Tojo, who will be dispatched to the APTERR Secretariat in substitute with Mr. Kenji Okuhira, whose term will be terminated in a few months. On this occasion, all of the APTERR staff showed their wholeheartedly gratitude for Mr. Okuhira’s dedication to facilitate APTERR’s operation on strengthening food security, and warmly welcome the new Japanese Expert to join the APTERR team.
Apart from this, the updates on the ongoing Tier 1 and 3 implementations under Japan’s contribution as well as the details of the 9th APTERR Council Meeting were also discussed during the meeting. Currently, there are a total of 1,779 metric tonnes of Tier 3 rice under both prepositioned and urgent request systems still carrying on in three countries, namely Cambodia, Myanmar and the Philippines. Regarding this, Mr. Chanpithya expressed his sincere appreciation to the consistent supports from Japan to help safeguard food security among the member countries. From this, the MAFF expressed its intention to continue engaging in Tier 3 programme for this year along with supporting an extension of almost-expired Tier 1 agreement between Japan and the Philippines as well.
