Heena Gambhir:
The monsoon may start to retreat from first week of September or may be early next week, Indian Meteorological Department's chief LS Rathore told NDTV, even as the countrywide rain deficit grew to 12 per cent for the season.
Mr Rathore said the monsoon is not likely to stage a dramatic recovery as the forecast for September does not look very encouraging.
Though rain deficiency is posing problem for farmers, but the earlier forecast of the Indian met department stands correct.
Before the onset of monsoon the met department had predicted the deficient monsoon. In April, IMD had said, quantitatively this year the monsoon would be 93 per cent of the Long Period Average (LPA), 7 per cent below normal. Then later in June it was revised downwards to 88 per cent of LPA.
The phase one surplus, plus 16 per cent rain in June, became an opportunity for the private player Skymet to take the limelight.
However, the IMD stood by its forecast that Monsoon rain in 2015 will be 88 per cent of the LPA, means total rain between June to September would be 12 per cent deficient.
Markets ignored IMD's forecast, government, economists and experts remained optimistic.
Now as we enter into the last leg of the monsoon season, 80 per cent of the monsoon rain is over, from June 1 till today the rain deficiency stands at 12 per cent -- what the IMD had predicted.
Mr Rathore tells NDTV that total rain by the end of September could be 1-2 per cent below the original forecast of 88 per cent of LPA. An early onset probably saved this year's monsoon.