“The El Niño, leading to deficiency in rainfall, will impact (food) prices and it is concerning,” said Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) member Shashanka Bhide in an interview with CNBC-TV18 on Thursday, June 22. The RBI MPC member also sounded the need to look out for how El Nino develops.
But he had seen some hope in the IMD forecast. "The normal monsoon forecast by the Indian Meteorological Department, despite the emergence of the El Niño phenomenon, would be supportive of agricultural growth,” Bhide had said in the MPC minutes released on Thursday.
RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das also said the spatial and temporal distribution of the South West monsoon in the backdrop of a likely El Nino weather pattern needs to be watched carefully, especially for its impact on food prices.
"International prices for key food items like rice and sugar are at elevated levels. Adverse climate events have the potential to quickly change the direction of the inflation trajectory," Das said.
The RBI governor further noted that geopolitical tensions, uncertainty on the crude price trajectory and volatile financial markets pose further upside risks to prices. These considerations warrant close monitoring of the evolving price dynamics, he added.
IMD's latest report has forecast the development of El Niño in June-August, while climate scientists have announced that an El Niño weather pattern has already taken hold and will strengthen through to the end of this year and the first months of next year. They have further warned that there is a good chance that it could be a particularly strong El Niño this year.
While the weather office has given a forecast of normal monsoon this season with 96 percent of the long period average rainfall (plus-minus 4 percent), D.S. Pai, a senior scientist of IMD, said chances are that the monsoon rainfall may remain at the lower end of the forecast.
"We expect El Niño to continue into the winter, and the odds of it becoming a strong event at its peak are pretty good, at 56 percent. Chances of at least a moderate event are about 84 percent," wrote Emily Becker, Associate Director of the Univeristy of NMiami's Coperative Institute for Marine and Atmopsheric Studies, on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) blog.
