Recovery tracker: Economic activity slows further, power demand stays weak

Domestic air traffic, retail and recreation visits down

Weekly indicators of economic activity showed signs of a further slowdown.

People registered fewer vehicles for the week ending Sunday, January 23, than the corresponding week in the previous three years. The latest week’s numbers show 334,325 registrations compared to 3,81,861 for the same week in 2021. Numbers were higher (between 410,000-440,000) in 2020 and 2019.

The number of domestic air passengers dropped over the previous week. There were 12,270 flights carrying 1.18 million passengers in the latest week. The previous one had 14,434 flights carrying 1.29 million passengers.

The number of retail and recreation visits dropped to their lowest in months. Visits were down 14 per cent, shows mobility data from search engine Google. It uses anonymised location data to track visits to various categories of places during the pandemic. The change is recorded in comparison to a baseline from early on in 2020 when the pandemic had not yet taken hold.  Workplace visits also declined .

Monday morning (9 a.m.) traffic congestion improved over the previous week. It remains less than half of 2019 levels shows the data from global location technology firm TomTom International. It was down 54 per cent in New Delhi compared to 60 per cent in the previous week. Mumbai traffic congestion was down 65 per cent compared to 68 per cent previously.

The Indian Railways showed slower growth in the quantity of goods it carried. Freight quantity grew 7.12 per cent for the latest week compared to 10.23 per cent in the previous one. The amount of money it made from carrying these goods (called freight revenue), grew at 8.52 per cent compared to 15.26 per cent previously.

Power demand remains weak as winter keeps energy demand in check in most parts of the country. The power utilities across the country generated 3,798 million units of electricity on average per day (based on reporting day data) during the week ended January 23, 2022 up from 5.5 per cent from 3599 MUs in the previous week. The power generation last week was however 7.8 per cent higher than  in the  corresponding week in FY20 but down marginally (-0.1 per cent) from generation in the corresponding week in FY21.

Business Standard tracks these indicators as a way of getting a current picture of the economy. Official macroeconomic data is often released with a lag. Analysts globally have been tracking similar indicators. They give a sense of the economic effects of government restrictions to control the Covid-19 pandemic. Google data is released with a lag. The latest is as of January 20. Traffic numbers are for Monday morning. All other data is as of Sunday, January 23.