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India Monsoon Seen Missing Forecast of Normal Rain This Year

Skymet put the chance of below-normal monsoon showers at 60% and chance of a drought at 25%.

India Monsoon Seen Missing Forecast of Normal Rain This Year
A worker carries a sack of vegetables in the rain at the Vashi Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) wholesale market in Mumbai, India (Photographer: Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg)  

(Bloomberg) -- India’s monsoon, which irrigates more than half of the country’s farmland, is likely to be below an earlier forecast of normal showers, Skymet Weather Services Pvt. said.

Precipitation during the June-September rainy season is forecast to be 92 percent of the long-term average of about 89 centimeters (35 inches), compared with a prediction of 100 percent made in April, the New Delhi-based private forecaster said on its website. The forecast has a margin of error of 5 percent, it said.

India Monsoon Seen Missing Forecast of Normal Rain This Year

The monsoon is critical to the farm sector as it accounts for more than 70 percent of India’s annual showers, with about 700 million of the 1.3 billion population depending directly or indirectly on farming. Deficient rain in the South Asian nation, the world’s second-biggest producer of rice, wheat and sugar and top grower of cotton, can lead to lower crop output and spur imports of commodities like edible oils, pulses and sugar.

“The southwest monsoon is likely to go into a prolonged weak phase during August,” Skymet said on Wednesday. “As of now, the oceanic parameters are not at all favorable for enhancing monsoon rains during the second half of the season.”

Warming of the Pacific Ocean surface is continuing, indicating an evolving El Nino, it said. El Nino, which occurs when the equatorial Pacific surface warms and touches off a reaction in the atmosphere above it, often brings dry weather to parts of Asia and Australia. The Indian Ocean Dipole has remained neutral, while the Madden Julian Oscillation is not likely to become active until the middle of September or even later, it said.

Below-Normal

Rain is seen at 88 percent of the long-term average in August, compared with the earlier forecast of 96 percent. Showers in September are likely to be 93 percent of normal, lower than the earlier prediction of 101 percent, it said.

India Monsoon Seen Missing Forecast of Normal Rain This Year

Monsoon rainfall has been about 6 percent below normal so far since June 1, according to the India Meteorological Department. Rain in July, which accounts for a third of the country’s total annual rain, was about 94 percent, data from the weather office showed.

"There will be some concerns but I don’t see any large impact on agricultural output," Devendra Kumar Pant, chief economist at India Ratings and Research Pvt. Ltd., a local unit of Fitch Ratings. The deficit is only in some parts of the country, which are primarily growing paddy-rice. "You have to look at the spread across the country."

Skymet put the chance of below-normal monsoon showers at 60 percent and predicted a 15 percent possibility of a normal rainy season. There was also a 25 percent chance of a drought this year, it said.

--With assistance from Vrishti Beniwal.

To contact the reporter on this story: Pratik Parija in New Delhi at pparija@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Phoebe Sedgman at psedgman2@bloomberg.net, Atul Prakash

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