Widespread differences in reports of present damage were still being received, he said.

"(Losses) could easily be in excess of 100,000 tonnes (of raw sugar production)," he said. "But it's speculative at this stage."

It may still be a few days before inspectors could get into the fields to assess damage, he said.

As reported earlier this week, the La Nina weather effect has wiped out part of Australia's sugar cane crop, with unseasonal cyclonic wind and rain having lashed coastal areas in Australia's sugar state, Queensland.

Such weather normally occurs in northern Queensland during the tropical wet season from around December to February, after the six-month crush is complete.

Industry sources have unofficially estimated losses of around to a million tonnes ofsugar cane and up to about 200,000 tonnes of raw sugar.

Before the damage, the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (Abare) forecast Australia would produce 5.54 million tonnes of raw sugar against 5.57 million tonnes in 1997.

Australian production of raw sugar now appeared likely to be closer to the five million tonnes mark, industry officials said. Australia's sugar cane production was forecast at 41.60 million tonnes in 1998, up from 41.06 million tonnes in 1997. Queensland was forecast to produce a record 39.1 million tonnes of this.

Rutledge said on Friday that a simple figure could not be put on present losses.

The effects of rain, flooding and high wind damage of cane would extend beyond obvious direct present damage, he said.

"The canefields are now extremely waterlogged and in many districts harvesting and crushing has to cease for an extended period of time, in some cases a matter of weeks," he said.

Aside from cane damage, which would cause reduced sugar productionin itself, Australia's crushing season may now be extended, with consequent implications for sugar content, Rutledge said. A delayed harvest might also extend into the wet season at the end of the crush and not all cane may be taken off, he said.

"A range of issues ... add up to a loss of sugar production which is too complex (to produce an immediate loss estimate)."

The bounce in the world sugar price on Tuesday this week, after news of crop losses in Queensland, was on technical factors as well as Queensland losses, Rutledge also said.

The market was heavily over-sold and was also reacting slightly to falling prices of world equities and other Financial markets. The sugar market's bounce was not entirely a Queensland weather-driven price move, he said.

Rutledge earlier this week told Reuters that that losses to Australia's sugarcane crop were "quite significant".

Torrential rain, which dropped up to 500 mm or 20 inches in some cane growing areas of Queensland and 300 mm in others, had knocked overmost of the cane crop North of Mackay, grower organisation CANEGROWERS has said.

Australia's 1998 sugar crush is also showing reduced sugar content in the cane because of unseasonal rain early in the season. Latest figures show a sugar content of 12.55 per cent, down by about one percentage point on last year. La Nina is the opposite weather effect to El Nino and can bring heavy rain and floods in the Australia/east Asian region of the Pacific.