India is on course for its driest monsoon in 17 years, as a strengthening El Nino weather pattern curbs seasonal rainfall, raising concerns over crop yields and food prices.
Cumulative rainfall during the June to September monsoon season is currently 15 per cent below the long-term average, according to the India Meteorological Department. If the deficit holds, this would mark the weakest monsoon since 2009, when rainfall was 18 per cent below normal. The weather office had originally forecast a 10 per cent shortfall for this season back in May.
Christian Werner, managing director of Australia-based consultancy Global Weather Climate Analytics, said conditions may become favourable for a tropical cyclone in the Bay of Bengal in the last week of September, which could bring some relief to eastern and northeastern India. However, he does not expect the storm to meaningfully change the national picture, projecting the seasonal deficit to settle between 13 and 16 per cent.
A separate prediction platform at Lancaster University in the UK, known as CRUCIAL, is assigning a 68 per cent probability that the season will end with a rainfall deficit of 10 to 20 per cent, according to founder Mark Roulston.
The monsoon is critical for hundreds of millions of Indian farmers who depend on seasonal rains to irrigate fields, and accounts for the bulk of the country’s annual rainfall. India is among the world’s largest producers of rice, sugar and cotton, all of which could be affected by the shortfall.
The prolonged deficit threatens to hurt both the current harvest and the next planting cycle, compounding pressure on food prices that have already risen for a seventh consecutive month, hitting 5.95 per cent in August, the highest level this year. According to Yuvika Singhal, an economist at QuantEco, every one percentage point shortfall in monsoon rainfall typically adds about 25 basis points to food inflation.
In response to weaker rains and rising prices, the government has allowed duty-free sugar imports and is selling subsidised onions in some states to help cool food costs.
(Source: Business Standard)
