Recovery tracker: More people flying and registering vehicles, shows data

Retail, recreation visits slip over last week but remain higher than pre-Covid days

With confidence returning as daily Covid-19 cases slipped below 1,000, more people stepped out for retail and recreational activities in the latest week than they did in pre-pandemic days — though, their number was lower compared to last week.

While retail and recreation visits were 6.6 per cent higher than before the pandemic took hold, these were down week-on-week basis. In the previous week, these visits were up 9.1 per cent, shows mo­bility data from search eng­ine Google, which tracks peoples’ movements using anonymised location data. This helps understand mobility trends across countries during the pandemic. Workplace visits also increased (see chart 1).

According to a government bulletin on Monday, 816 Covid-19 cases were reported over the last 24 hours.

Traffic congestion in ma­jor cities moved closer to normalcy, shows data from global location technology firm TomTom International. It was 15 per cent below 2019 levels in New Delhi. The Mumbai number showed an 18 per cent gap over 2019. The gap for both cities narrowed over the previous week (see chart 2).

Vehicle registrations also picked up further in the latest week but remained below 2019 levels. Registrations were down 11 per cent over the same week in 2019, compared to an average 25 per cent gap in the previous week. In all, 376,107 vehicles were registered across the country during the week ending Sunday, April 10, shows government data (see chart 3).

 

The number of air passengers grew week-on-week but remained lower than the high recorded in the last week of March. Airlines carried aro­und 328,000 travellers per day on average during the week ending April 10 — up 2.37 per cent from 321,000 in the previous week (see chart 4).

 

The Railways, meanwhile, registered lower growth in the quantity of goods carried during the week (8.01 per cent). It was 11.18 per cent in the previous week. The amount of revenue it made from carrying these goods, called freight revenue, grew at 13.74 per cent over the same week last year. It was up 16.2 per cent in the previous week (see chart 5).

 

Power generation continued to rise amid soaring temperatures. Power utilities generated 4,551 million units of electricity on average per day during the week ending April 10. This is 19.2 per cent higher than the 3,818 million units for the corresponding week in 2019. Power generation was also higher than it was in the previous week (see chart 6).

Business Standard tracks these indicators to get a weekly picture of how the economy is doing since official macroeconomic data is often releas­ed with a lag. They give a sen­se of what is happening on the ground. The traffic data is as of Mon­d­ay (April 11) 9 am, while Google data is as of April 7. All other data is as of Sunday, April 10.