Kazakhstan may, after all, be God's country.

Central Asia's largest grain producer appeared, last month, to have lost its special relationship with the Almighty after it downgraded its forecast for this year's harvest to 17.0m-17.3m tonnes.

In June, deputy agriculture minister Arman Yevniyev said the central Asian republic had "definitely all the reason to believe" in a grain crop of up to 18.7m tonnes adding: "Divine forces are probably on our side."

Rapid revision

However, Kazakhstan has now signalled that the crop may beat both forecasts.

The office of Kazakhstan's president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, said on Friday that the "gross harvest in bunker weight was about 21 million tonnes of grain, the second biggest harvest in the last five years".

While the more widely-accepted clean weight is typically 7-8% below bunkerweight, reflecting the loss in drying the crop and removing dirt and husks, the figure nonetheless implies a harvest of more than 19m tonnes, higher than even Mr Yevniyev's earlier hopes.

Remarkably, much of the improvement seems to have come in a matter of days, with Kazakhstan only on Monday pegging its harvest at 17m-18m tonnes, clean weight.