By Rajendra Jadhav and Mayank Bhardwaj
NEW DELHI (Reuters) -India is likely to see normal monsoon rains in 2022, the state-run weather office said on Tuesday, the fourth straight year of normal or above normal summer rains that spur farm and overall economic growth in Asia’s third-biggest economy.
A spell of good rains could lift farm and wider economic growth and keep a lid on inflation, which jumped to eight-year high in April and prompted the central bank to raise lending rates.
India is likely to see rainfall at 103% of a long-term average this year, Mrutyunjay Mohapatra, director general of the state-run India Meteorological Department (IMD), told a news conference.
The IMD in April forecast monsoon rains at 99% of the long-term average.
The IMD defines average, or normal, rainfall as between 96%and 104% of a 50-year average of 87 cm (35 inches) for the entire 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, the IMD data shows.
Monsoon rains are expected to be average in June, Mohapatra said.
The monsoon arrived on the coast of Kerala state on Sunday, two days ahead of the usual time.
Monsoon rains are likely to be average over the central region, where crops such as soybean and cotton are grown.
Top rubber growing state Kerala in the south, tea growing Assam in the northeast and rice growing West Bengal in the east could get below normal rainfall this year, the IMD said.
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 some 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.
Farming contributes around 15% to India’s $2.7 trillion economy while sustaining more than half the population of 1.3 billion.
Other than watering farms and recharging aquifers and reservoirs, regular rains during the monsoon season can bring relief from the searing heat.
“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.
(Reporting by Rajendra Jadhav and Mayank Bhardwaj; Additional reporting by Swati Bhat; Editing by Jacqueline Wong and Susan Fenton)
