Jakarta, Oct 13 - Indonesia's has revised up its forecast for rice output this year to 63.9 million tonnes of unmilled rice, up from an earlier estimate of 63.5 million tonnes, an agriculture ministry official said on Tuesday.
"We are confident that rice output will exceed its target. We will see the biggest ever output since our independence," Ati Wasiati Hamid, director of food crop protection at the ministry, told a media discussion on food security.
The ministry's forecast is also bigger than Indonesia's statistics agency's second of three annual forecasts of 62.56 million tonnes made in July.
Wasiati, however, said she believed the statistics agency would also revise up its forecast in its third forecast to be published in November.
She said the bullish estimate was based on the ministry's findings that planted areas were bigger than previously anticipated.
The rice was also getting sufficient rainfalls despite initial fears over the impact of the El Nino dry weather pattern, she said.
A better harvest will help Southeast Asia's biggest economy to freeze rice imports for the second consecutive year.
Indonesia is scaling back rice imports after it posted last year a surplus of over 1.6 million tonnes, the first in nearly two decades.
Wasiati said with a bumper harvest this year, Indonesia could make large scale exports next year compared with only around 100,000 tonnes estimated for this year.