The dry season started in Indonesia, the world's largest archipelago nation and one of the top commodity exporters, as early as March and is expected to last through October, when it enters the rainy season.

"Crops will enjoy a fair share of rain this time of year despite the dry season, which is good. La Nina's effect is still on and Indonesia will experience a 'wet' dry season this year," an official at the meteorology office told Reuters.

"Our rainy season will be much wetter because of the impact of La Nina. We don't know yet when the phenomenon is going to end," he added.

Some government officials have expressed confidence of bountiful rice harvests this year -- thanks to La Nina, cooler-than-normal sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean which affect weather patterns. The phenomenon bringsheavier-than-normal rains in southern and eastern countries, including Indonesia. A Singapore meteorologist said this month that La Nina might linger in Southeast Asia until December.

Agriculture minister Soleh Salahudin said this week Indonesia would be able to reduce its rice imports by more than 50 per cent this year because of an increased production, helped by La Nina. "We have a very good outlook for this year because we have a very good harvest for rice and for corn. I think a moderate harvest for soybeans," he said while on a trip in the United States.

Commodity traders said that Indonesia, one of the world's largest rice importers, was expected to import three million tonnes of rice in 1999.Salahudin said that a larger domestic crop has allowed the state commodity regulator, Bulog, to buy about 1.5 million tonnes of rice from Indonesian farmers. Indonesia's unhusked rice production is expected to rise 0.39 per cent to 48.66 million tonnes in 1999, according to the Statistics Bureau. Traders saidrains were reported in the country's coffee and cocoa growing areas but fears they would damage the crops had started to fade, except in East Java where rainfall was still high and affected corn output.

"Corn supply is tight because the crops are not so good in East Java. An export boom last year is also responsible for corn scarcity," said one trader in Surabaya, the provincial capital of East Java.

Heavy rains have delayed the country's cocoa and coffee harvests to June from the normal April this year. Coffee is mostly grown in Sumatra and cocoa in Sulawesi.

Indonesia is one of the world's top producers of coffee, cocoa, rubber, tea, palm oil and pepper.

Noer Madjid, executive secretary of the Indonesian Coffee Association, said the country's coffee output was expected to reach 470,000 tones in 1999 against 430,000 tonnes in 1998 because La Nina's impact was not as strong as expected. Falls in the world's commodity market had absorbed most players' attention. "Rains frequently fall in Sulawesi, butI think the market's attention is centered on the international prices which continue to fall," said one trader.