Recovery tracker: More air passengers, retail and recreation visits rise

Railway freight indicators growing slower than before

Weekly indicators of economic activity remained buoyant.

The number of people travelling on flights inched up. There were over 400,000 passengers on Sunday alone. The weekly average shows that there were 365,000 daily passengers on 2,707 flights. The previous week had 364,000 passengers. The flights numbered 2,672 (chart 1).

Mobility indicators showed a rise in footfall at places of leisure. Search engine Google uses anonymised location data to track how people are moving during the pandemic. Retail and recreation visits were 8.7 percentage points higher than the previous week in comparison to the early part of 2020 before the pandemic took hold. Park visits were 16 percentage points higher even as workplace visits declined (chart 2).

Some 412,000 vehicles were registered in the latest week. This is five per cent higher than the corresponding period in 2019. The total vehicle registrations numbered 391,000 at the time. Vehicle registrations have been in excess of the 410,000 mark for the second week in a row (chart 3).

Monday morning 9 a.m. traffic is still lower than 2019 levels in major metros, shows data from global location technology firm TomTom International. It was 24 per cent below the 2019 mark in New Delhi. Mumbai traffic is down 39 per cent (chart 4).

The Indian Railways registered lower growth in the quantity of goods carried. The number grew 3.34 per cent for the latest week compared to 8.91 per cent in the previous week. Freight revenue, or the money it made from carrying these goods, rose 13.38 per cent compared to 13.43 per cent previously (chart 5).

The amount of electricity generated in the country was 24.4 per cent higher than was the case in 2019. Power plants generated a total of 4,108 million units of electricity in the latest week, based on a seven-day moving average of reporting day data. The 2019 figure was 3,303. Power generation fell five per cent week-on-week (chart 6).

Business Standard uses these indicators as a way of getting a weekly picture of the economy. Analysts globally have been using similar indicators as official macroeconomic data is often released with a lag. This helps give a more immediate picture of the economic effects of the Covid-19 pandemic which began more than two years ago.

Google releases data with a lag. The latest is as of October 4. Traffic data is as of October 10, Monday morning 9am. All other data is as of Sunday, October 9.