India: Export Ban To Continue Despite Good Harvest

India's Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar has revealed that although the government is expecting bumper rice harvest this year due to good monsoon season, it has no plan to relax the ongoing ban on rice exports.

According estimates, India will produce an additional 3 million MT of rice in the next crop season following an increase in high price realization the farmers received this year.

In the crop year that ended in June 2008, India produced an all-time high of 95.68 million MT of rice.

India, like other Asian rice exporters, banned exports in April to safeguard domestic supplies and to slow food-price inflation.