Shanghai, July 7 - The worst floods to hit China's sugar-producing region of Guangxi since 1996 have affected 10 percent of the sugarcane areas in Liuzhou, a major sugar-producing city, but the overall extent of the damage is still unknown, a local official said on Tuesday.
"We are still calculating and estimating. The damage hasn't yet been checked in some areas of Guangxi as the floods cut roads and our people can't get access," said an official at the Guangxi Sugar Exchange.
In Liuzhou, 12,000 hectares of sugarcane plantations were damaged, said the official, who declined to be named as he was not authorised to speak to the media. He did not give a detailed estimate of overall lost output in the province, which produces about 60 percent of China's sugar and sowed 967,000 hectares of sugar this year.
However, sugar traders said they understood that output had not been seriously impacted.
"There was a flood that started last Friday and was already subsiding on Sunday. Cane only starts to rot when submerged for more than five days, and the flooded area in Guangxi is mostly in Liuzhou, where the cane grows on hilly slopes," said a dealer in Singapore.
Guangxi was worst hit by heavy rains that raged across southern China last week, destroying homes, flooding crops, cutting power, damaging roads and causing rivers to overflow.