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Met department forecasts some rain in drought-hit areas

Drought-hit areas in India's northwest could get some rains in the next few days according to present indications, weather officials said on Friday.

"The coming week may become a little better because of the present weather scenario over eastern Orissa and central Madhya Pradesh," H R Hatwar, an official of the India Meteorological Department, told Reuters.

"The overall improvement is not very significant. The week ending July 24 was better than the week ending July 31. The whole of July the monsoon was subdued."

The June-September southwest monsoon rains arrived over the southern state of Kerala in early June and moved to western parts of the country, but its progress in northwestern India where oilseeds and rice are grown has been erratic.

The monsoon is vital to India's economic health as agriculture contributes 25 per cent to the country's gross domestic product and employs some 70 per cent of its more than one billion population.

Agriculture Minister Ajit Singh has called it the worst drought in more than a decade, affecting oilseeds, rice and coarse grains crops. But he said there would be no grain shortages because the country had sufficient stocks.

Indian shares ended slightly higher on Friday, recovering from early falls as investors scooped up bargains, mildly cheered by news that some drought-hit areas had received rains this week.

The Bombay index closed up 0.31 per cent at 2,985.01 points, after sliding 1.4 per cent on Friday morning.

Hatwar said drought-affected states like Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana, Punjab and Delhi should get scattered or isolated rains over the next two days.

He said some of these regions, including the soybean-growing areas in Madhya Pradesh, got rains on Thursday and Friday and the pattern could continue.

"Central India will get isolated rains while the northwest India could get isolated and scattered rains," he said.

But Hatwar said the chances of the groundnut-growing state of Gujarat getting rains were less.

Rains in India's key soybean-growing areas in central India this week have given a new lease of life to the crop and improved output prospects, traders said on Friday.

India annually produces over five million tonnes each of groundnut and soybean in the winter season, sown mainly in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh.

There were no rains in the last week of July in Madhya Pradesh, which accounts for about 70 per cent of the country's soybean output. Traders feared that the condition of the crop would deteriorate if there were no rains in the first few days of August.

Rains have also eluded Gujarat's Saurashtra region, which accounts for most of the state's winter groundnut output of around 2.2 million tonnes.

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