Monsoon Covers India Nine Days Early, Boosting Crops
July 06, 2010, 5:58 AM EDT
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(Updates with trader’s comment in fourth paragraph.)
By Thomas Kutty Abraham
July 6 (Bloomberg) -- The monsoon, which accounts for more than 70 percent of India’s annual rainfall, covered the entire country nine days ahead of normal today, raising prospects for bigger harvests of rice, cotton, soybeans and sugar cane.
Rains set over northwest India, including all of Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, the nation’s biggest cane grower, Medha Kole, a director at the India Meteorological Department, said by phone from Pune. The monsoon usually blankets the nation by July 15.
The advance of the rain-carrying winds to India’s grain- bowl region in the north, an area worst affected by last year’s drought, may lift farm output and cool food inflation that rose to near an 11-year high in January. Good rainfall and high grain reserves may lead to a “serious storage problem,” Sharad Pawar, farm minister, told reporters yesterday in New Delhi.
“Rice production is likely to hit a record,” said Vijay Setia, president of the All India Rice Exporters’ Association. “All food crops will do better this year and sowing has picked up in areas where it was lagging so far.”
The country has 60.8 million metric tons of grains in state reserves, the highest since 2002-2003, and farmers are expected to plant the largest area in two years this season, Pawar said.
Rice has been planted across 4.65 million hectares (11.5 million acres) as of July 2, an increase of 2.4 percent from a year earlier, while cotton acreage has surged 50 percent to 4.37 million hectares, according to the farm ministry. Oilseeds have been sown in 2.89 million hectares, twice last year’s level.
Import Tax
Sugar output will be 24 million to 25 million tons in the year starting Oct. 1, more than the 23 million forecast by the government, because of an increase in the crop area, according to the National Federation of Cooperative Sugar Factories Ltd.
That may prompt the government to impose a tax on imports of the sweetener in August or September, Pawar said. The nation allowed duty-free imports as prices doubled last year after dry weather reduced domestic production and excess rain damaged the crop in Brazil, the biggest grower.
Most of India will receive heavy to very heavy rain during the next 48 hours, the weather bureau said. The rain deficit has narrowed to 13 percent as of yesterday from 16 percent in June.
Rainfall in the June-September season may be 102 percent of the long-period average, helped by the La Nina weather condition, the forecaster said last month.
--Editors: Ravil Shirodkar, Jake Lloyd-Smith |
