India is likely to get “below normal” monsoon rains in 2023 with an increasing likelihood of El-Nino, which typically brings dry weather to Asia, private weather forecasting agency Skymet said on Monday. It added that monsoon rains in India are expected to be 94 per cent of the long-term average.
The government defines average, or normal, rainfall as between 96 per cent and 104 per cent of a 50-year average of 88 centimetres (35 inches) for the four-month season beginning June.
“Likelihood of El Nino is increasing and its probability to become a dominant category during the monsoon is growing large. El Nino return may presage a weaker monsoon,” Jatin Singh, managing director, Skymet said in a statement.
The state-run India Meteorological Department is expected to announce its annual monsoon forecast soon. Nearly half of India’s farmland, which has no irrigation cover, depends on annual June-September rains to grow crops such as rice, corn, cane, cotton and soybeans.
Skymet expects northern and central parts of the country to be at risk of being rain deficit.
Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, known as the agriculture bowl of North India, are likely to observe less than normal rains during the 2nd half of the season, the weather forecaster said.
Meanwhile, unseasonal rains and hailstorms have damaged ripening, winter-planted crops such as wheat in India’s fertile northern, central and western plains, exposing thousands of farmers to losses and raising the risk of further food price inflation.
Last week while presenting the bimonthly monetary policy, RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das said adverse climatic conditions are a risk to the future inflation trajectory.
He added that looking ahead, the expectation of a record rabi harvest bodes well for the easing of food price pressures. There are already evidence of a correction in wheat prices in March on supply-side interventions by the government. The impact of the recent unseasonal rains in some parts of the country, however, needs to be watched.
However, he said on the supply side, the rabi crop production is estimated to increase by 6.2 per cent in FY23.
(With Inputs from Agencies)
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