India’s annual monsoon rains, key to farm output and economic growth, are expected to be better than previously forecast, raising prospects of good harvests and possibly helping to cool double digit food inflation. The monsoon rains, which deliver 75-90% of the country’s rainfall, were expected at 102% of the long-term average, government officials said on Friday, raising an earlier forecast of 98%. Bountiful rains despite slow progress of the June-September monsoon will...

The rapid growth of emerging economies has led to a shift in economic power: forecasts based on analysis by late economist Angus Maddison suggest that the aggregate economic weight of developing and emerging economies is about to surpass that of the countries that currently make up the advanced world. According to Perspectives on Global Development: Shifting Wealth, a new publication from the OECD Development Centre, the economic and financial crisis is...

The emerging economies of Brazil, India, China and Russia will enjoy an agricultural boom over the next decade as production stalls in Western Europe, a report says. Agricultural output in the Bric nations will grow three times as fast as in the major developed countries, the joint United Nations-OECD study said. Livestock and crop prices will stay above long-term averages, it added. And rising incomes and urbanisation in developing states...

Batten down the hatches? Pull out all the stops? It might be difficult to find the cliché that adequately emphasises the urgency with which the government needs to tackle inflation. The worry is not just that May inflation was in double digits (10.16 per cent). It is also a fact that prices of commodities other than food are now beginning to gallop. Inflation in non-food manufactured products (often referred to...

The Food Outlook of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) that came out in June, 2010 has predicted that world cereal production would be reaching a record level of 2279.5 million tonnes in 2010-2011, which would be an increase of 1.2 percent over last year’s global production of 2253.1 million tonnes. As a result, it has been predicted that there would be a modest increase in world trade in cereal...