The week in charts: Lower foodgrain target, deficient rains, cheaper stocks

In this weekly Plain Facts compilation, we present to you data-based insights, with easy-to-read charts, to help you delve deeper into the stories reported by Mint in the week gone by.

From a reduced foodgrain production target for the ongoing crop year and a deficient monsoon in nearly half of India’s districts to falling stock valuations, Tamil Nadu’s growing share of factory output, and another medal-winning run by Indian chess teams, here is this week’s news in numbers.

Food shock

The Indian government has set a foodgrain production target of 373.93 million tonnes (mt) for the 2026-27 crop year, about 0.7% below the record output estimated for 2025-26. The lower target comes amid deficient monsoon rainfall during the kharif season and the threat of El Niño. Foodgrain production had increased 7.7% in 2025-26 and 5.3% in 2024-25.

The lower target largely reflects subdued expectations for rice and maize production. Announcing the target, agriculture minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said crops had been damaged across about 611,000 hectares in Karnataka, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan and Gujarat because of heavy rains, floods or droughts.

Deficient rains

India’s southwest monsoon season ended at 87% of its long-period average (LPA), making it the fourth-weakest since 2001 and the 13th-weakest since 1901, according to the data released by the India Meteorological Department (IMD). The June-September monsoon began with rainfall 35.4% below normal in June, followed by a 1% surplus in July, a 16.3% shortfall in August and a 7.6% shortfall in September.

India last recorded a below-normal monsoon in 2023, when rainfall was 95% of the LPA. The deficit was spread across the country, with 43% of India’s 734 districts recording deficient rainfall. Among major agricultural states, Bihar, Punjab and Karnataka each recorded deficient rainfall in four of five districts.

Silver linings

The Indian stock market continued to weaken, with the benchmark BSE Sensex losing 2% in the first three trading days of the week. The index is now down 16% from its all-time high. The correction has, however, pushed a larger share of stocks into lower valuation bands, as measured by their price-to-earnings (PE) multiples, according to a Mint analysis of 3,756 BSE-listed companies based on ACE Equity data.

The share of stocks trading at a PE multiple above 40 fell from 36% in September 2024 to 26%, while the share in the 10-25 PE band rose from 18% to 26%. While lower PE multiples can signal attractive valuations, they can also point to weaker earnings growth.

News in numbers

1%: The increase in the minimum support price of wheat for the upcoming rabi marketing season. The highest increases were for safflower, at 10.3%, and rapeseed and mustard, at 6.7%.

103,000: Houses sold across nine major Indian cities in the July-September quarter, down 6% from a year earlier, according to PropEquity data.

16: Indian men who joined the boards of S&P 500 companies this year, according to ISS-Corporate and data provider Equilar. Only white men and women secured a higher number of board seats.

$6 trillion: Annual global revenue the artificial intelligence (AI) market will need to generate by 2031 to justify the capital being deployed to build AI infrastructure, according to Bain & Company.

₹645 crore: What ITC paid to raise its stake in Sproutlife Foods, which owns nutrition and healthy foods brand Yoga Bar, from 47.5% to 100%. ITC first invested in Sproutlife in May 2023.

State of manufacturing

The number of registered factories in operation in India increased 2.6% year-on-year in 2024-25, while employment in them rose 7.3% to 16.6 million, according to the Annual Survey of Industries (ASI) 2024-25, released by the statistics ministry.

Tamil Nadu accounted for the largest share of manufacturing employment at 15%, followed by Maharashtra at 13.1%, Gujarat at 13%, Uttar Pradesh at 8.7% and Haryana at 6.4%. Gross value added (GVA) by factories increased 9.6%. Among the five states with the largest GVA, four saw their share of national factory GVA decline. Tamil Nadu was the exception: its share rose from 10.3% in 2023-24 to 10.9% in 2024-25.

Medals on board

India’s men’s and women’s chess teams finished among the medals at the recently concluded Chess Olympiad in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, but could not defend their titles. The men finished second and the women third, with Uzbekistan A winning the men’s competition and China the women’s.

India also won the title of best overall side and individual medals for six of its 10 players, including a gold for Savitha Shri. It was the sixth consecutive time that the Indian men finished in the Olympiad’s top 10, while the women extended their top-10 run to five editions.

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