Recovery tracker: Greater power generation and mobility even as cases spike

Vehicle registrations and railway freight numbers came in lower than before

India generated more electricity than ever before and showed signs of greater mobility even amid an uptick in Covid-19 cases.

As many as 8,084 new cases were recorded during the past 24 hours, according to a government update on Monday.  This is nearly 80 per cent higher than the 4,518 cases logged in last week.

Power generation trended higher amid the delayed monsoon. Power utilities across the country generated 4,785 million units of electricity on average per day during the week ended June 12, up 17.1 per cent from 4,087 MUs generated during the corresponding week in CY19. The generation was up 1.4 per cent week-on-week.

People made more trips for essential shopping, showed search engine Google’s mobility data. It uses anonymised location data to track how people are moving during the pandemic. Grocery and pharmacy visits were up 3.57 per cent compared to the previous week. Retail and recreation visits were up 2.14 per cent.

The number of air passengers remained stable. Nearly 380,000 people took flights daily, with the average daily domestic flights at 2,833 for the latest week.

The growth in the quantity of goods that the Indian Railways carried was down to 6.63 per cent from 9.36 per cent in the previous week. The growth in the money that the Indian Railways made from carrying these goods, called freight revenue, fell to 14.61 per cent from 16.8 per cent earlier.

Traffic congestion moved closer to normalcy in major cities, shows data from global location technology firm TomTom International. Monday morning 9am New Delhi traffic was 38 per cent below 2019 levels, compared to the previous week’s 49 per cent decline. Mumbai’s traffic congestion was down 47 per cent in the latest week compared to 50 per cent previously.

Vehicle registrations dropped 18.2 per cent compared to the same period in 2019. The previous week had recorded a growth of 8.7 per cent. Indians registered a total of 332,725 vehicles during the week.

Business Standard tracks these indicators as a way of getting a weekly picture of how the economy is doing. Governments often release official macroeconomic data with a lag. Analysts globally have been tracking similar indicators to understand how the pandemic is affecting the economy. Google releases its data with a lag. The latest is as of June 8th. Traffic data is as of June 13, Monday morning 9am. All other data is as of Sunday, June 12.