Recovery tracker: Power generation lower than during May 2020 lockdown

Key indicators suggest lower economic activity than has been seen since the 2020 national lockdown.

This week power generation fell below the last year level indicating continued deceleration in economic activity from the lock­down. From the peak power generation in April this year before the lockdown, when daily average was around 4200 million units, power generation is now down by around 23 per cent, not very different from the dip immediately after the national lockdown announced in March 2020 (see chart 1).

Fewer people are going to work. Workplace visits are down to the lowest in around 12 months, according to mobility data from search engine Google. The data is released with a lag. The latest is as of May 19. Google tracks visits to various categories based on anonymised location data. Retail and recreation visits also show a decline (see chart 2).

Traffic is still lower down by 75 per cent or more in major cities, shows data from global location tech­no­logy firm TomTom International. Mumbai’s recovery seems slightly faster than New Delhi’s, according to the data (see chart 3).

Some of this is also reflected in the emissions data. Business Standard tracks levels of nitrogen dioxide in the air. The pollutant comes from industrial activity and vehicles. A drop has previously been seen during Covid-19 shutdowns globally. Mumbai shows a rise in emissions now, based on Bandra locality data. Delhi emissions are still down by more than half compared to 2019 (see charts 4, 5).

The Indian Railways was also affected by the govern­ment’s national lockdown last year. This low base has helped show numbers in better light because the Railways presents data on a year-on-year basis. There are signs of this base effect becoming less powerful than before. Growth figures were higher in the previous week. They are still in double-digit territory (see chart 6).

Business Standard tracks these indicators as a way of understanding how the economy might be doing currently. Official macroeconomic data is often released with a lag. Analysts globally have been tracking similar indicators to get a sense of the economic situation ahead of the official data release.

All data, except that from Google, is for the week ending Sunday, May 23.

There have been over 200,000 Covid-19 cases det­ec­t­ed every day during the last week. The cases had peaked at over 400,000 earlier in the month. There have been over 300,000 deaths so far, according to official figures.