Jakarta, Aug 17: The South East Asian countries, reeling under speculative attacks on their currencies, now face a new threat to their largely agrarian economies from a drought developing in the region.

The arid spell tightening its grip on the Indonesian archipelago is linked to the El Nino weather phenomenon, and threatens crops ranging from coffee to corn and cocoa, commodity traders said.

``There has been no rain in Lampung for two months,'' a coffee trader from the key growing region in South Sumatra said at the weekend.In previous years, the area received some rainfall during the dry season, he said, but, ``it's been particularly dry this year''.

Sugito Suwito, head of Indonesia's statistics bureau, said on August 13 that the country's inflation rate could exceed the projected six per cent this year if the drought intensifies.

An official from the National Meteorological and Geophysical Office said he had now been instructed by the government not to release weather forecasts to the media. Indonesian traders said coffee plants had begun to flower in Lampung and the flowering and fruiting process could be affected if the much-needed rains did not come on time.

The situation is very much the same in South Sulawesi, the country's main cocoa growing area.

``A few weeks ago, we had continuous rain that aborted some of the flowers. Now, we are back again to the dry spell, and the flowering has to start all over again,'' one trader said.

Traders said the corn harvest in East Java, set to peak towards November, could also be affected. One trader said daily arrivals were presently half the usual 100 tonnes.

He said Indonesia's total agricultural production could decline this year if remedial measures were not taken.

Public works minister Radinal Moochtar said the government was planning to step up artificial rain-making efforts to help farmers. He said more dams also would be built to store rain water until the next wet season, expected after October.

Meteorologists say the developing drought in Southeast Asia is connected to El Nino, a collection of exceptionally warm and long-lived currents in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of South America that emerges every two to seven years.

The El Nino effect begins in the northern hemisphere's summer and can last for as long as 22 months, bringing drought to some areas and storms and floods to others. The strongest El Nino this century, which peaked in the winter of 1982-83, is estimated to have caused at least $13 billion of damage world-wide. Scientists say the El Nino now forming promises to be as equally severe. Philippines has dug hundreds of wells at farms around the country and is about to set up giant plastic sheets to catch rain water.

Agriculture department officials said rice and corn farmers, who suffered planting delays because of sparse rains in recent weeks, have asked the government to seed clouds to in a bid to produce rains.

``Even the farmers' standing crops have been affected by lack of water,'' said chief of the cloud-seeding operations of the Bureau of Soils and Water management Wilfredo Cabeson said. But the government said it expected the full impact of the El Nino to be felt on the Philippines economy next year.The Philippine weather bureau said water levels in the country's five major dams had dipped below normal levels because of below-average rainfall in recent months.

In an advisory early this month, it said much of the country experienced little rain between April and July this year due to fewer than usual cyclones. In contrast, the situation in Thailand appears to be improving after a lack of rain earlier this year devastated the first corn crop, forcing farmers to replant.

``Central and northern areas had been a concern for sometime, but the amount of rainfall seems to have improved substantially,'' a Thai weather forecast bureau official said.

But he added: ``Despite the improvement, the average amount of rain in the central region is still lower than expected."

Thailand is the world's largest rice exporter, and the staple is grown mainly in its central, northern and northeastern areas. It is also a leading international sugar exporter, but the domestic industry was divided on the impact of the dry spell on the cane crop.Some officials said at least 15 per cent of this year's sugar harvest had been damaged because it lacked sufficient rain during a crucial development stage, but others said recent increased rainfall would help improve the situation.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.