Rain gods to smile adequately this year, shows Met forecast

Good tidings for the economy as monsoon seen normal, but El Nino may strike late in the season

The India Meteorological Department on Thursday said rains during the four-month monsoon season from June would be normal across the country. The monsoon forecast may bring cheer to the economy reeling under a slew of negative signals, including the warning of a rating downgrade by Standard and Poor’s yesterday.

However, the Met department did not entirely discount the impact of the El Nino, which causes less rains during the second half of the season.

In its first official forecast for the 2012 monsoon season, the Met department said in all probability rains would be around 99 per cent of the Long Period Average (LPA). A monsoon is considered normal when rains are 96-104 per cent of the LPA. The LPA is the average annual rainfall across the country in 50 years starting from 1941. It is estimated at 89 centimetres.

 

There is a 47 per cent chance of the monsoon being normal this year and a 24 per cent chance of it being below normal.

“Overall, we believe rains this year should be around 88 centimetres across the country,” India Meteorological Department Director General L S Rathore told reporters.

However, the threat of the dreaded El Nino has not disappeared. Department officials said the critical weather phenomenon that could disrupt the Indian monsoon was in a neutral stage, but its re-emergence during the second half of the season around August could not be ruled out.

“Almost 60-65 per cent of the nearly 15 weather models the Met department has studied for making the forecast show the El Nino won’t have an impact on the Indian monsoon this year, but around 30-35 per cent of models show that it would have an impact,” said D Sivananda Pai, head of the department’s Long Range Forecast Division.

The El Nino causes sub-surface ocean temperatures to rise, leading to less than normal rains over the Indian mainland. Its last devastating effect was in 2009, when the country suffered one of its worst droughts in three decades. Agriculture and allied activities that time grew just one per cent.

“The El Nino is known to re-emerge any time between two to seven years, hence there is a possibility that it could come back again in 2012,” Pai said.

The four-month southwest monsoon season that starts from June is crucial not only for agriculture but also for the economy at large. For agriculture, it is the lifeline as almost 55 per cent of the country’s agricultural land does not have ideal irrigation facilities.

The quantum of summer rains also influences winter food crops such as wheat and rapeseed, grown in irrigated areas that use water in reservoirs dependent on monsoon rains. Agriculture accounts for about 15 per cent of India’s nearly $1.7 trillion economy, Asia’s third largest.

“The final picture of the impact of this prediction on agriculture will be known only when the region-wise forecast is released. Farm growth depends not only on the quantum of rains, but also their spread, distribution and timeliness,” Ramesh Chand, director of National Centre for Agricultural Economics and Policy Research, told Business Standard.

Higher farm output would also rein in food prices and help the government take steps to cut the fiscal deficit and farm subsidies. Food inflation rose close to double digits in March from 6.07 per cent in February and deflation in the previous month, the latest figures showed.

Eminent agriculture economist and chairman of the Commission for Agriculture Costs and Prices, Ashok Gulati, said with 47 per cent probability of normal rains and an unusually cool April, caution was needed and the situation needed to be monitored till May. “The current weather pattern over north India does not make me very upbeat. I will advise caution,” he said.

Madan Sabnavis, chief economist of CARE Ratings, said a normal monsoon was not sufficient for inflation to come down. "We have had a couple of years with a good monsoon but prices remained high. This is nothing to cheer about. This is just a comforting factor," he said.