India will be a major influence on the global rice trade in the calender year 2003.

With continued large scale subsidised exports of rice by India in absence of new sales limits, global rice price is unlikely to see any upward momentum, the United States department of agriculture has cautioned in its report.

Global rice trade for the calendar year of 2003 is expected to be at more than 26.7 million tonnes of the milled basis, up marginally from USDA's December forecasts by about 85,000 tonnes but down by about 355,000 tonnes from last year's trade.

Global ending stocks were higher fractionally at 105.1 million tonnes, which is still about 20 per cent below the previous year's ending stocks and the lowest since 1986-87.

According to USDA, continued large scale subsidised exports of rice by India and absence of major new sales has limited price increase global prices for rice.

Even the crop in China for this year is expected to be about 2 per cent lower than its output last year. China's crop, predicted at 121.8 million tonnes , is the smallest since 1988-89.

Global rice consumption for 2002-03 is projexcted at 408 million tonnes, fractionally up from its December forecasts.

Global rice production for the year (2002-03) is forecast at 380.3 million tonnes, about seven per cent below the production of 1999-2000 at 409 million tonnes according to the latest figures released by the US department of agriculture. This will be the third consecutive year of a declining world production and ending stocks.

Production from India and China are the main reason for this drop in global production of rice this year.

At an estimated 78 million tonnes, India's rice production is 15 per cent lower than that of last year.

This has been mostly due to a bad monsoon in the months of July and August. According to USDA , this year's crop has been the smallest since the year 1992-93

Smaller plantings are believed to have lowered the output in China. Lower output is also expected in Australia, Japan, South Korea and Philippines but larger crops are expected in bangladesh, Egypt and the European Union.