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New Delhi: India, the world's biggest rice producer after China, will review a ban on exports of the grain only after assessing the crop prospects for next year, Commerce Secretary G.K. Pillai said on Tuesday.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government banned exports of the staple in April this year to safeguard supplies and slow food-price inflation after rice prices around the world reached a record high.
Farmers have begun sowing paddy after monsoon rains covered most parts of the nation almost a month ahead of schedule.
Critical
The monsoon accounts for four-fifths of India's annual rainfall and a normal season may lift output of crops including rice and oilseeds and help cool seven-year high inflation.
"We are comfortable with wheat and rice harvests this year," Pillai told reporters in New Delhi. "We may have a surplus of two to three million tonnes."
India's rice production in the year ending June may reach a record 95.7 million metric tonnes, the agriculture ministry said on April 22. That compares with 93.4 million tonnes produced a year earlier.
The South Asian nation's rice production prospects in the year beginning July are "good", Pillai said. The crop is harvested from November. The government has no plans to ease a ban on the export of wheat and it was not considering curbs on overseas sales of corn, he said.
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