Pricey Chinese chopstick tax hits Japanese restaurateurs

Pricey Chinese chopstick tax hits Japanese restaurateurs
Staff Writer
13/05/2006 3:35 AM
TOKYO -- Walk into any Japanese noodle shop or restaurant and chances are you'll be eating with a pair of disposable wooden chopsticks from China. But not for long.
In a move that has cheered environmentalists but worried restaurant owners, China has slapped a five per cent tax on the chopsticks over concerns of deforestation.
The move is hitting hard at the Japanese, who go through a tremendous 25 billion sets of wooden chopsticks a year: about 200 pairs per person. Some 97 per cent of them come from China.
Chinese chopstick exporters have responded to the tax increase and a rise in other costs by slapping a 30 per cent hike on chopstick prices, with a planned additional 20 per cent increase pending.
The price hike has sent Japanese restaurants scrambling to find alternative sources for chopsticks, called "waribashi" in Japanese.
"We're not in an emergency situation yet, but there has been some impact," said Ichiro Fukuoka, director of Japan Chopsticks Import Association.
A pair of waribashi that used to cost a little over one yen, or about one cent Cdn, now goes for 1.5 to 1.7 yen. The rising costs of raw wood and transportation because of higher oil prices have also contributed to the rise, industry officials said.
But pretty soon, some fear Japan won't even be able to get expensive chopsticks from China: Japanese newspapers Mainichi and Nihon Keizai reported that China is expected to stop waribashi exports to Japan as early as 2008.
To minimize the impact, Japanese importers now buy more bamboo chopsticks and are considering new suppliers, including Vietnam, Indonesia and Russia, said Fukuoka.
-- Associated Press



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