Ukraine has taken its turn in promoting the fortunes of the Black Sea grain exporters by adding 1m tonnes to its forecast for this year's crop.

"We will have 48m tonnes this year," Ivan Demchak, Ukraine's deputy agriculture minister, told a conference in Yalta in southern Ukraine.

While lower than last year's 53.3m tonnes, the upgrade reflects the latest in a series of upward revisions, with Ukraine a month ago adding 4m tonnes to its harvest forecast.

It also continues a round of upbeat news from the country and its neighbours, Kazakhstan and Russia, which have prompted concerns over competitiveness among other exporters, including America, Australia and Europe.

'Buy a port'

On Tuesday, Kazakhstan's farm minister, Akylbek Kurishbayev, proposed that the landlocked country "buy a port or a facility at a port of the Black Sea to get access to other countries and expand our exports", according to the Interfax news agency.

And on Wednesday, leading Moscow analyst Andrei Sizov said that the quality of Russian wheat exports was not riddled with bugs, as some reports had suggested, highlighting the bumper crop in Siberia where cold acts as a natural deterrent.