"Rainfall is high in Java, especially in the central and eastern parts. Too much rain will affect the quality of the rice because it will cause high water content," Waan Tarmin, a spokesman for the Jakarta-based meteorology office, told Reuters. He said harvesting in Java, Indonesia's main rice growing area, was expected to take place in March/April, while rainfall would be less at the end of next month as the dry season arrived.

"The monsoon rains will start to subdue at the and of March," he said.The rainy season peaks in January and February, he said. Continuing rains have caused landslides and flooding in Java in the past few weeks, but there were no reports yet about the extent of damage to rice fields. Corn is also grown in Java.

Indonesia is one of the world's topproducers of coffee, cocoa, palm oil and rubber. Agriculture minister Soleh Salahudin said flooding had little impact on rice production. "The impact is small," he said. Salahudin said the government would stick to the estimate that Indonesia's unhusked rice output would be 52 million tonnes in calendar 1999, against 47 million tonnes last year. "But if there is an impact caused by flooding, we predict the output won't be less than 50 million tonnes," he said on Friday.

Tarmin said rainfall was high in the southern part of Sumatra island, where most of the country's coffee is grown. The central and southern part of Sulawesi, where cocoa is, are prone to flooding because of the incessant rains, he said.

Torrential rains also hit most parts of Kalimantan, on the Indonesian side of Borneo island, where rubber is cultivated.

"Coffee beans are waiting to be harvested soon, but it is raining all the time. If the rains do not stop, then we won't be able to process the beans. They will get rotten," said onetrader in Bengkulu in Sumatra.

"The continuing rains may even delay the harvest and affect the quality," he said.

The provinces of Bengkulu, South Sumatra and Lampung in Sumatra account for 75 per cent of the country's coffee output. Many farmers dry their beans in the open. Rachim Kartabrata, a senior official at the Association of Indonesian Coffee Exporters has said Indonesia's coffee crop for 1998/99 might exceed 400,000 tonnes.

He added that exports could be 360,000 tonnes in the year. One cocoa trader in Ujung Pandang, the provincial capital of South Sulawesi, said flooding had subsided in the growing areas.

"Flooding lasted for three days last week, but it had subsided. We don't hear reports of damage suffered by the cocoa trees, but too much water will affect the quality," she said.

The harvest was expected to start in April. Cocoa output in 1999 was expected to reach 341,000 tonnes, up 10 per cent from 1998, the Indonesian Cocoa Association said.

Its natural rubber output was expected tohave hit 1.55 million tonnes in 1998 against 1.50 million in 1997.