--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
INDIA: May 29, 2007
NEW DELHI - India's annual monsoon rains have hit the country's southern coast on Monday, four days ahead of the normal date of June 1, the weather department said on Monday.
The June-September monsoon is vital to the health of India's near-trillion-dollar economy as it determines farm output and subsequent rural demand for a range of consumer products.
Analysts said an early monsoon would help several crops -- including cotton, soybean, groundnut and rice -- if rains were evenly spread over the next two months.
They said the distribution of rains would be crucial.
"India Meteorological Department declares onset of southwest monsoon over Kerala today, May 28," the department said in a statement.
The department had earlier forecast the annual rains would reach Kerala more than a week earlier than scheduled on May 24.
The department said the southwesterly flow over the Arabian Sea and south peninsula had strengthened alongwith widespread rains over Kerala for the last two days.
"Conditions are favourable for further advance of the monsoon over some parts of coastal and south interior Karnataka and some more parts of Tamil Nadu during next 48 hours," it said.
Monsoon rains arrived over the South Andaman Sea on May 10.
There is on average a gap of two weeks between the monsoon's arrival there and the breaking of another branch over Kerala. Different atmospheric conditions determine the progress of the two systems.
Weather officials said in April that this year's rains were likely to be 95 percent of the long-term average, with a 5 percent margin of error.
Earlier a senior weather department official said the monsoon rains had arrived in the coastal state.
"It is the monsoon. There is no doubt," the official, who did not want to be identified, told Reuters.
The rains usually fall in three spells, each separated by a gap of two to three weeks.
The monsoon weather phenomenon usually covers the entire country by mid-July, and provides the main source of water for agriculture, which generates more than a fifth of India's GDP.
In the past, patchy distribution has caused floods in some areas and drought in other regions.
Farming and related activity provide a livelihood to more than two-thirds of India's 1.1 billion people, and good rains usually spur rural spending on a wide range of industrial products, from soaps to motorcycles.
Healthy rains have helped the economy to expand at an average of more than 8.5 percent over the past three years -- behind only China among major economies.
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
