Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Friday, Jul 23, 2004
Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Friday, Jul 23, 2004 |
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Industry & Economy
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Climate & Weather `IMD does not have world-class equipment' Our Bureau
New Delhi , July 22 THE Minister of State for Science & Technology, Mr Kapil Sibal, today admitted that the India Meteorological Department (IMD) did not have the world-class equipment required to make reliable monsoon forecasts. "We don't have world-class equipment. If the IMD had advanced equipment, it could have made weekly forecasts of the quantum of rain even at district-level basis," he said.
The Minister said that he had met the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, a couple of days back and sought Rs 500 crore as a one-time investment for purchase of equipment, which "can be bought off the shelf". "Dr Singh was appreciative of the request and he directed us to seek the required allocation from the Planning Commission," Mr Sibal said. The IMD had forecast 100 per cent normal rainfall for the country as a whole during the four-month South-West monsoon season, extending from June 1 to September 30. In its Long Range Forecast update, released on June 29, it had predicted that the rainfall in the agriculturally crucial month of July would be 98 per cent of the long period average (LPA), with a model error of plus or minus nine per cent. Against this, the country has actually recorded a deficient rainfall of 19.27 per cent during the current month till July 14, with the cumulative deficiency for the entire season from June 1 to July 14 amounting to 9.56 per cent. Mr Sibal, however, said that it was not just the IMD, even international agencies had uniformly predicted normal monsoon this time.
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