early rare earths mover, page-6

JAPAN PRESS: The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry is working to
bolster imports of rare-earth metals from Vietnam, the US, Australia
and Kazakhstan, in an effort to reduce Japan's reliance on China, which
currently accounts for 90% of overall imports, to less than 60%, the
Nikkei reports. METI aims to roughly quadruple imports from these four
countries to slightly more than 10,000 tons a year by around 2012. Japan
imports roughly 30,000 tons a year on average. At 120,000 tons, China
accounted for 97% of worldwide rare-earth output last year.