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NEW DELHI: A quarter of India’s districts are facing the threat of drought and sowing of crops are 20 percent lower than the previous year,finance minister Pranab Mukherjee said on Tuesday.
India is heavily dependent on the June to September monsoon rains for farm output, to help rural income and to drive economic growth. After the driest June in 83 years, the annual rains have been more than a quarter below below normal this season.
“Monsoon situation is still erratic,” Mukherjee told reporters. “One hundred and sixty one districts have been declared drought-prone. So far as sowing is concerned, 20 percent would be down,” he said.
India has 604 districts. The rain deficit since June 1 worsened to 28 percent at the weekend, raising fears that the season may turn out to be as bad as 2004 when summer crop output fell 12 percent after a drought. The rains are vital for sugarcane, oilseeds and other crops.
Mukherjee said the government was ready to manage a drought and a contingency plan was also in place. “Of course, always there is a contingency plan,” the minister said. “There is no point of pressing the panic button because you will go and start chanting drought, drought, drought and it will have an adverse impact,” he said.
Among measures the government could take to mitigate the situation are to raise imports and curtail exports. It has already stepped up efforts to buy more sugar and has banned wheat exports and restricted rice shipments.
“Fortunately, Punjab and Haryana have extensively used the ground water. Bihar and certain other states, there are shortfalls,” Mukherjee said.
Asked whether the shorfall in rains would affect India’s growth, he said he expected the economy to expand more than 6 percent in 2009/10, as predicted by the central bank. Asia’s third largest economy expanded 6.7 percent in the last fiscal year, sharply lower than the 9 percent or more it grew in the previous three years, as the global economic crisis took a toll. Mukherjee was also confident that direct tax receipts for the 2009/10 fiscal year would be surpassed.