METI to Offer 33.1 Billion yen Subsidy for Rare Earth Issue

Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry announced the ministry offers 33.1 billion yen of subsidy for selected 160 items for private sector’s rare earth issue actions including consumption saving, alternative material development, investment for diversification of the sources and recycling as a part of around 100 billion yen budget for the government program. METI expects the program would encourage around 110 billion yen of domestic capital expenditure by domestic companies. METI will accept encouraging rare earth counter actions by May to offer additional 8.9 billion yen of subsidy.

METI expects the various efforts could reduce annual 10,000 tonnes of consumption in years compared with current around 30,000 tonnes of annual domestic consumption while the users could diversify the sources to stabilize the supply heavily depending on China.

METI accepted 175 ideas from private sector by end of January as the first batch of the program to select 160 items for the subsidy. With the subsidy, Japanese companies try to improve the rare earth situation through the various efforts in automobile industry, magnet and materials makers, battery and related devices makers.

The first items include 65 items for consumption reduction, 62 items for recycling, 7 items for source diversification and 26 items for investment for test and evaluation.