Normal, timely rains this year: Met
NEW DELHI : India’s annual monsoon will be normal this year, the Met department said on Tuesday despite lingering possibilities of the disruptive El Nino weather pattern which is linked to some of the worst droughts in the country.
The southwest monsoon is the lifeblood for India’s farm-dependent $2 trillion economy, delivering 70 percent of the country’s annual rainfall and is crucial for an estimated 263 million farmers.
“India is in for a normal monsoon which will be good for agriculture and economy,” KJ Ramesh, the director general of India Meteorological Department, told reporters. IMD issues another updated forecast in June.
He said rainfall will be 96% of the long-period average (LPA) with a 5% error margin. India defines normal rainfall as between 96% and 104% of a 50-year average of 89 cm for the entire four-month season.
There is a 38% probability that the monsoon will be better than 96%, he said, indicating the second consecutive normal monsoon after back-to-back drought in 2014 and 2015.
What will come as a music to farmers in several states was the forecast of even rainfall distribution across the country.
Despite normal monsoon last year, large parts of south India received patchy rains in 2016, forcing governments in Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh to declare the states drought affected. Crop failure in some states have pushed many farmers to penury and suicide.
The forecast is critical to the government’s hopes of achieving a projected growth rate of more than 7.5% as a good harvest could lift rural incomes and boost spending on consumer goods.
Two-thirds of India’s population depends on farm income and nearly 60% of summer sown areas do not have assured irrigation. Summer crops account for nearly half of India’s food output, including rice, lentils, sugar, spices, mangoes and oilseeds.
The monsoon rains usually arrive on the southern tip of Kerala state by around June 1 and retreat from the western state of Rajasthan by September-end.
There are fears that an emerging El Niño could impact monsoon rains. The IMD, however, said a weak El Niño could emerge only towards the later part of the year. 13 of the 15 El Nino years in the past 55 years have seen deficit rainfall in India.