In this paper, a novel current control scheme for vector-controlled permanent-magnet synchronous machine drives in the overmodulation (OVM) range is proposed, where a composite observer is applied for online extractingthe stator current harmonics in the OVM range. The current harmonic components need to be eliminated before inputting to the PI (proportional integral) current controllers for the highperformance torque control of the PMSM in the OVM range, where the voltage utilization of the voltage-source inverter (VSI) is maximized resulting in an expansion of the operating range for the PMSM drive system. The PSIM simulation results have been shown to verify the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.