JAKARTA, Dec 22, 2009 (Xinhua via COMTEX) -- Indonesia's rice production next year was forecast to increase by 5 percent from this year's prediction of 63.84 million tons due to increase on productivity and wide harvest-area, a vice minister said here Tuesday. "Our rice production is predicted to increase next year. The rise is about 5 percent," Vice Minister of Agriculture Ministry Bayu Krisnamurthi told Xinhua over phone. Rice is the staple food for most of over 230 million population in the Southeast Asian nation.

Currently the country's rice stock reached over 1.7 million tons, higher than that of last year's 1.2 million tons, said Krisnamurthi.

With the huge amount of stock and rise on the production, Indonesia may sell more rice to overseas, according to Director at Agriculture Ministry Sutarto Alimusro.

But, the vice minister earlier said that Indonesian authorities would tighten control on the sales to the international market, as the global demands and prices of the commodity has been forecast to surge next year, making it to be more attractive to sale the commodity to overseas rather than to domestic market.

According to the director, actually over 500,000 tons of the rice stock has been available for sales to overseas.

Indonesia produced 60.2 million tons of rice in 2008, according to the ministry.

Currently, the harvest-area rose to 12.5 million hectares this year from 11.8 million hectares three years ago, the director said.