Recovery tracker: Railway freight gains at year-end amid omicron surge

Residential mobility indicator rises higher than previous weeks

Weekly indicators showed varying degrees of economic activity as the year drew to a close amid rising cases of new Covid-19 variant Omicron.

The Indian Railways saw an increase in the quantity of goods carried. Growth over the previous year was up 9.3 per cent compared to 8.7 per cent in the previous week. The money that the railways made from carrying these goods, called freight revenue, was up 12.9 per cent for the latest week compared to 11.2 per cent previously.

There was a drop in people going to work. People spent more time at home, showed mobility data from search engine Google. It uses anonymised location data to track how often people are visiting various categories of places. Residential data indicates time spent at home. This has shown a rising trend towards the end of December.

There has accordingly been a drop in traffic congestion in major cities. Mumbai weekly traffic congestion was down 48 per cent, shows data from global location technology firm TomTom International. It was down 31 per cent in the previous week. New Delhi traffic congestion was down from -17 per cent to -22 per cent in the same period.

Business Standard also tracks emissions of nitrogen dioxide. It comes from industrial activity and vehicles. Rising levels can point to more economic activity. Falling levels can be indicative of a decline. It was down 17 per cent from the same day in 2020 shows data for Delhi. Mumbai emissions remained muted.

The amount of electricity generated across the country declined on a week-on-week basis. Power utilities generated 3697 million units of electricity on average per day during the week ended January 3, 2022 (based on reporting day data) down 2.6 per cent from 3797 MUs in the previous week. Power generation for the latest week was only 0.6 per cent higher than in the  corresponding week in FY21 and 5.3 per cent higher than generation in the corresponding week in FY20.

Business Standard tracks these weekly indicators to get a current picture of how the economy is doing.  Official macroeconomic data is often released with a lag. Analysts globally have been tracking similar indicators. This gives an immediate approximation of the effects of Covid-19 restrictions on economic activity. Search engine Google releases its mobility data with a lag. The latest is as of December 30. All other data is as of Sunday, January 02.