India’s 2018 monsoon below average, lower than forecast; drop in rainfall could lift food prices, stoke inflation

New Delhi: The annual monsoon was below average and less than forecast, with key crop-growing northern states among areas that received less rain than needed, the weather office said on Sunday, reports Reuters. The drop in rainfall could lift food prices and stoke inflation, which is expected to harden in coming months because of rising fuel prices. Rains were 91 percent of the long-term average at the end of the July-September monsoon season, compared with a forecast of 97 percent, marking the fifth straight year in which the weather office has overestimated the likely rainfall.

The monsoon, which delivers about 70 percent of India’s annual rainfall, is critical for the farm sector, which accounts for about a sixth of India’s $2 trillion-plus economy and employs about half of the country’s 1.3 billion people. Despite low rainfall overall, the distribution was erratic, with some parts of the country experiencing extreme rainfall and flash floods that killed hundreds of people and damaged crops and property. In its annual economic survey for 2017/18, the proportion of extremely dry or wet weather conditions has increased steadily because of climate change, with rain-dependent areas suffering a 14.3 per cent fall in agricultural revenue owing to “extreme rainfall shocks”.

The rainfall in the country was below average mostly because of a lack of precipitation in the rice and maize-growing states of Bihar and Jharkhand and in the cotton-growing state of Gujarat, adds the wire agency Reuters, Major farm-dependent states, such as the oilseed and pulses-growing central state of Madhya Pradesh and the northern, rice-growing state of Uttar Pradesh also received rainfall that was lower than the long-term average.