US Department of Agriculture has raised its forecast for global rice production in 2017-18 by 1.9 mln tn to a record high of 486.3 mln tn due to an upgrade in India’s rice production estimate. Almost all of the production increase is for India, where production is raised to 110.0 MMT. In its second advance estimate, released on Feb 27, Indian government pegged the country’s rice production in 2017-18 at 111.0 mln tn against 109.7 mln tn a year ago.