HONG KONG: Some Japanese restaurants in Hong Kong are expecting a 30 per cent dip in business, after the city’s import controls on seafood from 10 Japanese prefectures kicked in on Thursday (Aug 24).
This comes as Japan began discharging treated radioactive wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear plant.
Hong Kong is Japan’s second largest market for seafood exports after mainland China, and the import ban has placed some eateries in a spot. 
βWe expect that business will further drop by another 20 to 30 per cent or even more for some high-end restaurants,β said Hong Kong Federation of Restaurants and Related Trades president Simon Wong.
βFor the high-end restaurants, most of their products are directly air-flown from Japan to Hong Kong on the same day.
And if they don’t have enough varieties or quantity of fishery products for the restaurant, then the business will be affected.β
Mr Wong believes the supply shortage will not lead to a spike in price, as the priority of merchants is to retain their customers.
The import ban applies to 10 prefectures including Tokyo, Fukushima and Nagano.Β It covers all fresh, frozen, chilled, dried or processed seafood, as well as sea salt and seaweed.
Overall, this accounts for about 10 per cent of Japanese seafood imports into Hong Kong. Source: CNA
