Egypt expects to export 600,000 to 800,000 tonnes of rice this year, Trade Minister Rachid Mohamed Rachid said on Wednesday.

That would mark a doubling of last year's exports, he said, but still well short of levels before Egypt curbed sales in response to water shortages and a food crisis in 2008.

"We have resumed exports again," Rachid told Reuters. "We are probably going to have anything between 600,000 to 800,000 tonnes of exports of rice this year, depending on the crop."

"We are definitely seeing no less than 600,000 tonnes," he said on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Rachid said in September that Egypt had the capacity to export one million tonnes of rice a year but that it wanted to limit these exports to save water.

Egypt has a water supply of about 860 cubic metres per person a year, below the water poverty line of 1,000 cubic metres per person a year, with agriculture consuming more than 80 per cent of that supply.-Reuters