Recovery Tracker: Dip in mobility, air traffic; freight numbers improve

Improvement in freight, vehicle registration numbers

Many economic indicators showed subdued activity during the latest week.

People moved around less. Workplace visits were down by 0.9 per cent, showed data from search engine Google. It uses anonymised location data to track how people are moving during the pandemic. Transit stations such as bus stops and train stations showed a 1.3 per cent decline.

There was marginally lower traffic congestion in major cities, showed data from global location technology firm TomTom International. In New Delhi, Monday 9 am traffic congestion was 33 per cent below 2019 levels in the latest week compared to the 31 per cent decline seen in the previous one. Mumbai traffic congestion was down 38 per cent, compared to the 36 per cent decline seen earlier.

Power generation was flat over the previous week, but the gap over 2019 levels widened. The power producers in the country generated 4,295 million units (MUs) of electricity per day on average in the latest week. It was 4,297 MUs per day in the previous week. In comparison, power generation was 3,650 MUs per day during the corresponding week in 2019.

People got on fewer flights. For example, there were 2,497 flights that carried little over 321,000 passengers on Sunday, July 31. There had been 2,540 flights with 325,000 passengers on the same day in the previous week.

There was a narrowing of the gap in vehicle registrations. Indians registered 12.8 per cent fewer vehicles in the latest week compared to the 17.1 per cent gap seen previously. The total number of vehicles registered during the week was around 346,000 compared to 397,000 seen in the same period in 2019.

The Indian Railways registered 13.55 per cent growth in the quantity of goods carried. The amount of money it made from carrying these goods, called freight revenue, grew at 26.31 per cent. Both are higher than the previous week.

Business Standard tracks these indicators as a means of getting a weekly picture of how the economy is doing. Official macroeconomic data is often released with a lag. Analysts globally have been tracking similar indicators to study the immediate economic effects of efforts to control the Covid-19 pandemic, which began more than two years ago.

Search engine Google releases its data with a lag. The latest is as of July 27. Traffic data is for Monday 9 am on August 1. All other data is as of Sunday, July 31.