New Delhi: As many as four states, which contribute more than one-third of total foodgrains production, and five crops totals to one-fourth of total output are most hurt by deficient rains, a rating agency said on Wednesday.
As per CRISIL’s deficient rainfall impact parameter (DRIP), four states of Bihar, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh will be most hurt by deficient rains and these states contribute 34% of total foodgrain production in India.
Crops of jowar, soyabean, tur, maize and cotton are the most hit by deficient monsoon, and of these four food crops, besides cotton, contribute 26% of the total foodgrain and oilseed output.
“..importance of monsoon, and…agriculture, is magnified because the non-farm part of the Indian economy has been struggling, as underscored by poor investment and manufacturing activity,” Crisil Research said in a release.
“If monsoon ends up being deficient overall this fiscal, too, it would mark two failures in a row, which will be harder to deal with,” it said.
Meanwhile Crisil maintained its overall GDP growth forecast of 7.4% for fiscal 2016 with agriculture growing at a sub-trend rate of 1.5% on a weak base of last fiscal.
The impact of deficient rainfall is getting increasingly amplified because holistic efforts to reduce structural vulnerabilities are lacking, Crisil Chief Economist Dharmakirti Joshi said.
“We believe investing in Indian agriculture’s future has become economically and politically critical. The government needs to change the templates, and quickly so,” Joshi added.
The report also pointed that input and output price movements have been quite unfavorable to the farming community.
“The last few years have seen a sharp rise in wages and other input costs, while the increase in output prices was restrained, which reduced cultivation income and hit profit,” it added.
According tothe Indian Meteorological Department (IMD), rainfall deficit has widened to 10% and is projected to rise to 12% by the end of monsoon season next month.
PTI