Indian monsoon revives, crops await widespread rain

India's south-west monsoon has revived after a pause, but vigorous rains are needed to save standing oilseed crops and accelerate sowing, trade officials said on Monday.
The June-September monsoon, which eased in the last week of June, has now reached the desert state of Rajasthan and widespread rain is expected over the soyabean-growing central and the groundnut-growing western regions, weather officials said.
Last week India's weather office forecast normal and evenly spread monsoon rains across the country, raising hopes of more robust economic growth on the back of good farm output.
"We have positive signals and the monsoon should advance further into the northern regions, mainly Uttar Pradesh and Delhi," N. Jayanthi, a senior meteorological department official in Pune, told Reuters.
She said the monsoon was subdued last week but was picking up and more rains were expected over northern, central and western regions. The monsoon has already covered three quarters of the country.
Agriculture accounts for about a quarter of India's GDP and supports almost three quarters of its billion people.
Analysts expect normal rains to help the economy expand more than seven percent in the fiscal year ending March, 2005.
July and August rains are important because crop output for the year will largely depend on their geographical spread and timing. Analysts said some crops would suffer if they did not get rains in the next few days.
"Some areas in Saurashtra have received rainfall but it is not enough as we need widespread rains to save the groundnut plantings, which are suffering moisture-stress," Govindbhai Patel, a groundnut trader, said from Rajkot.
Saurashtra is the key groundnut growing area in the largest producing state, Gujarat, in the west.
Traders said the soybean crop in the main growing areas in central Madhya Pradesh state were withering and farmers would need to re-sowing.
"Soybean sowing has taken place in about 30 percent of the total area in the state but a long dry spell has damaged plantings," a leading trader in Indore, the main soybean area, said.
The normal total area under winter oilseeds is 15.4 million hectares. Up to the end of June, oilseeds had been sown over 2.12 million hectares, compared with 1.1 million in the same period last year.
India's 2003 monsoon was the best in more than a decade, helping produce big grain and oilseed crops, which helped boost economic growth to more than eight percent in the year to March, 2004.