Reuters – India will likely see normal monsoon rains in 2022, the state-run weather office said May 31.
A spell of good rains could lift farm and wider economic growth and keep a lid on inflation, which jumped to an eight-year high in April.
India is likely to see rainfall at 103 per cent of the long-term average this year, Mrutyunjay Mohapatra, director general of the state-run India Meteorological Department (IMD), told a news conference.
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The IMD in April forecast monsoon rains at 99 per cent of the long-term average.
The IMD defines average, or normal, rainfall as between 96 per cent and 104 per cent of a 50-year average of 87 centimetres for the four-month season beginning in June.
“At this stage, we can see that the rainfall is largely expected to be well distributed in most parts of the country,” Mohapatra said.
For the first time in more than two decades, India would see average or above-average rainfall for the fourth straight year in 2022, IMD data shows.
Plentiful monsoon rains in the country would boost rice output from India, the world’s biggest exporter of the staple. India’s surprise decision this month to ban wheat exports had raised doubts about curbs on overseas sales of rice as well. Government and industry officials told Reuters that India did not plan to curb rice exports.
One of the world’s biggest producers and consumers of farm goods, India relies on monsoon rains to water almost half its farmland, which lacks irrigation.
“A normal monsoon in terms of both the quantum as well as the distribution of rainfall is much needed to cool the inflation in food products and revive sagging rural (consumer) demand,” Rupa Rege Nitsure, chief economist at L&T Financial Services, said.
