Rainfall during the southwest monsoon will be normal this year at 103% of the longperiod average, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said on Tuesday. The long-period average (LPA) — currently the average of rains during 1971-2020 — for the JuneSeptember monsoon season is 87 cm. The secondstage long-range forecast has a model error of plus or minus 4%, the weather bureau said.“Rainfall will be spatially well-distributed over most regions including Maharashtra, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, northern areas of northeast India during June to September season,” IMD director-general Mrutyunjay Mohapatra said.The southwest monsoon contributes 74.9% to India’s annual rainfall and has a bearing on the rural demand for consumer goods, gold, cars, motorcycles, tractors, farm equipment, and inputs such as pesticides, fertilisers and seeds. Good monsoon rains have helped the agriculture sector record steady growth while the rest of the economy has suffered due to the pandemic. The agriculture, forestry and fishing sector grew 3.3% each in FY21 and FY22 as against a 6.6% contraction in the overall economy in FY21 and an 8.9% rise in FY22.The rainfall over the monsoon core zone, which consists of most of the rainfed agriculture regions, is most likely to be above normal at 106% of the LPA. Rainfall is likely to be below normal over Kerala, Meghalaya, Manipur, Tripura, Southern Assam, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Gangetic West Bengal and pockets of Rajasthan, Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, the IMD chief said.Prevailing La Niña conditions are likely to continue over the equatorial Pacific Ocean and there is a possibility of the development of negative Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) conditions over the Indian Ocean during the monsoon season. La Niña and IOD are seen as beneficial for Indian monsoon. This is the seventh consecutive year when the country would receive normal rainfall during the June to September months.