NEW DELHI: India will likely receive normal monsoon showers for a third straight year in 2012, boosting prospects of farm production and providing relief to an inflation-wary government, which is preparing to widen subsidised grain sales to the poor under the Food Security Act.
Rainfall in the June-September season is likely to be 99% of the 50-year average of 89 cm with a margin of +/–5%, science and technology minister Vilasrao Deshmukh said on Thursday.
The India Meteorological Department (IMD) defines normal monsoon rains as 96%-104% of the long-period average, which refers to the average showers received between 1951 and 2000. The monsoon season brings about 70% of annual rains and is crucial for summer-sown crops, as more than 60% of the country’s farmland is rain-fed, and also boosts ground water reserves for winter planting.
There is 47% probability of a normal rainfall season, 24% of below-normal and less than 10% of either excess or deficient showers, said earth sciences secretary Shailesh Nayak. The IMD defines 90%-96% of the benchmark average as below-normal showers, below 90% as deficient and above 110% excess.
IMD is expected to announce the date of arrival of monsoon rains by middle of May.
Usually, south-western monsoon hits the Kerala coast around June 1 and covers most of the eastern, southern (with the exception of Tamil Nadu) and western regions during the course of its journey.
“It’s very early to gauge whether the geographical spread of the showers will be widespread,” Nayak said, ruling out any adverse impact of recent rains across the country on the monsoon.
The monsoon forecast followed two unrelated but important events on Wednesday: global rating agency Standard & Poor’s cut India’s outlook to negative from stable, and cautioned inflation might not fall significantly due to structural issues, while Prime Minister Manmohan Singh formed an empowered group of ministers to be headed by finance minister Pranab Mukherjee to tackle any perceived threat of drought. Both suggest the government is in dire need of curbing inflation that has remained stubbornly high since a drought in 2009 clipped the summer harvest.
Headline inflation showed signs of moderation since December and stayed at 6.89% in March 2012 after tripping 9% in the first 11 months of 2011, although analysts have attributed the fall mostly to high base last year.
Analysts said the stakes on a good monsoon are high, as the government can do little in pushing through structural reforms like directing states to abolish the Agriculture Produce Market Committee to control inflation. Although food inflation hinges on a number of factors, including the benchmark price of crops and stocks, normal showers are a must for any self-sufficiency in food production.
According to the third advance estimate for 2011-12 released last week by agriculture minister Sharad Pawar, India’s grain production is estimated at a record 252.56 million tonnes, mainly due to bumper production of wheat and rice. The government needs at least 65 million tonnes of grains a year to implement the Food Security Act that aims to guarantee subsidised grain supplies to 75% of the rural and 50% of the urban households.
El Nino weather conditions associated with below-normal rains may come into play in the later part of the season. “At present, El Nino is in a neutral position and we will be watching it closely during next weeks,” Nayak said.
IMD makes its predictions on the basis of five parameters which include North Atlantic sea surface temperature, North West Europe land surface air temperature, and East Asia mean sea level pressure.