TOKYO: Japanese Prime Minister KISHIDA Fumio on Monday instructed relevant officials to keep the prices of imported wheat it sells to the private sector at the current levels in and after October, in order to prevent further price hikes for food products.

He made the instructions at a meeting held at the prime minister’s office in Tokyo to discuss ways to tackle soaring prices of goods and services brought on by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the weakening of the yen.

The government plans to draw up in early September additional measures to tackle higher prices and other factors affecting people’s lives.

“Soaring prices of bread, noodles and other food products that are essential to people’s daily lives are a pressing challenge,” Kishida said at the meeting. “Wheat prices will be about 20 pct higher in and after October” if the current pace of rise continues, he said.

Kishida also called for raising the ceiling on special grants used for local governments’ measures to help people in need from the current 1 trillion yen.

On subsidies paid to oil distributors to help curb surging gasoline and other fuel prices for which the budget has been secured until October, Kishida called for action to be taken based on the program’s implementation status through September.

Regarding the subsidy program, Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Yasutoshi Nishimura told reporters after the meeting that the government will look at the situation and speed up discussions on what it should do.

To fund the envisaged additional steps, the government plans to tap if needed reserve funds for measures against COVID-19 and higher prices whose balance now stands at about 4.7 trillion yen.

“The economy is a living thing, so we will introduce measures seamlessly depending on the situation, without being bound by precedents,” Kishida said at the meeting, stressing his resolve to continue tackling higher prices, possibly through the compilation of a second supplementary budget for fiscal 2022, among others.

“We need to pay close attention to uncertain factors that could hamper the economic recovery,” Chief Cabinet Secretary MATSUNO Hirokazu told a press conference on Monday, citing rising energy and food prices.

“We will implement comprehensive measures swiftly in a seamless way, depending on the price and economic situation,” he added.

JIJI Press