Chicago corn futures inched upward on Thursday, on technical buying and strong export sales, after the US Agriculture Department raised its outlook for domestic supplies of corn on expectations of reduced usage by ethanol producers.

Chicago Board of Trade corn futures turned higher after the report was released, with traders expressing relief that the government factored in all of the damage caused by the pandemic instead of making incremental changes.

CBOT May corn settled Thursday up 1-3/4 cents at $3.31-1/2 per bushel. US markets will be closed on Friday for the Good Friday holiday. Corn ending stocks for the 2019/20 marketing year were seen at 2.092 billion bushels, up from the USDA's forecast of 1.892 billion bushels in March, and above trade expectations of 2.004 billion bushels.

Ethanol sector usage was cut to 5.050 billion bushels from 5.425 billion bushels. On Thursday morning, the USDA reported export sales of old-crop corn in the week ended April 2 at 1,848,900 tonnes, a marketing year high, and new-crop sales at 608,800 tonnes, for a total of more than 2.4 million tonnes.

Japan was the week's top buyer, booking more than 700,000 tonnes of old-crop corn, while China bought 504,000 tonnes of new-crop corn and 63,000 tonnes of old-crop corn.

China's agriculture ministry raised estimates for its 2019/20 corn imports on prospects that shipments of the grain from the United States will increase under the Phase 1 trade deal.

Brazil's government crop supply agency Conab raised its estimate of the country's 2019/20 total corn harvest to 101.868 million tonnes, from 100.083 million in March.