Recovery tracker: Flights soar, vehicle registrations near pre-Covid level

Power generation was lower than the previous week

Some high frequency indicators of economic activity showed an uptick for the latest week.

Indians narrowed the gap over pre-pandemic vehicle registrations. There were 302,000 registrations during the week ending August 14. This is 5.2 per cent lower than the 318,000 registrations seen during the same period in 2019. The gap was 11.2 per cent in the previous week.

More passengers caught flights. There was also a rise in the number of daily flights. There were around 350,000 passengers on average in the last three days of the week. The flights numbered 2,659. The numbers showed a rising trend amid a string of holidays including Independence Day on Monday.

Retail and recreation visits were 12.4 per cent higher than they were before the pandemic took hold. Search engine Google tracks how people are moving during the pandemic using anonymized location data. Workplace visits showed a decline amid multiple public holidays during the previous week including Muharram on Tuesday. Raksha Bandhan followed on Thursday though this was not captured in the Google data, which is released with a lag.

The Indian Railways recorded lower growth in the quantity of goods carried. It grew at 6.37 per cent for the latest week compared to 15.95 per cent previously. The freight revenue was up 19.23 per cent in the latest week compared to 26.99 per cent previously.

There was a small decline in the amount of electricity generated in the country. The seven-day moving average was 4,299 million units as of reporting day data on 15 August. This is 1.4 per cent lower than the previous week. It is 16.7 per cent higher than in 2019.

Traffic congestion at 9 am on Monday saw a major drop, according to data from global location technology firm TomTom International. New Delhi traffic congestion was down 74 per cent compared to 2019, while Mumbai traffic was down 75 per cent. Monday was a public holiday on account of Independence Day.

Business Standard tracks these indicators as a way of getting a weekly picture of how the economy is doing. Analysts globally have been tracking similar indicators as official macroeconomic data is often released with a lag. Such high frequency indicators help understand how the economy is reacting to the pandemic and the impact of various government efforts to control its effects.

The Google data is released with a lag. The latest is as of August 10. The traffic data is as of Monday, 15 August. All other data is as of Sunday.