Recovery tracker: Retail and recreation visits at highest since March 2020

Traffic congestion was also up during the week

There were more people visiting retail and recreation spots last week than at any point since the March 2020 national lockdown.

Retail and recreation visits hit 90.7 per cent of pre-Covid levels, shows mobility data from search engine giant Google. It uses anonymised location data to track how people have been moving since the Covid-19 pandemic began to disrupt global life in early 2020.  The latest Google data as of October 05 shows that the current level of retail and recreation visits is the highest since March 18, 2020; when it had dipped 8.7 per cent below normal. Workplace visits are back 92.1 per cent (see chart 1).

Traffic congestion was also higher during the week, according to data from global location technology firm TomTom International. It was 79 per cent of normal levels in Mumbai. New Delhi traffic is at 88 per cent of 2019 levels (see chart 2).

Growth moved higher for Indian Railways in terms of both goods carried and revenue earned from them. The quantity of goods carried was up 10.1 per cent for the latest week compared to the same period last year. It was up 0.9 per cent in the previous week. Revenue growth was up 21.6 per cent compared to 5.5 per cent in the previous week (see chart 3).

Power generation showed small gains over the previous week and corresponding week last year. Power utilities across the country generated around 3900 million units of electricity on average per day for the latest week, up around two per cent from the previous week. It was up by a similar amount from the same week in 2020, and showed a gain of around 18 per cent over 2019. The numbers indicate a sharp fall in electricity generation during this period in 2019 (see chart 4).

Business Standard also tracks emissions of nitrogen dioxide. It comes from industrial activity and vehicles. Higher emissions are often associated with increased economic activity. Emissions were down 25 per cent compared to 2019 in Delhi.  They are down 83 per cent in Mumbai based on Bandra locality data (see chart 5,6).

These indicators provide a current picture of the economy ahead of the release of official data. Government macroeconomic numbers are often released with a lag. Analysts globally have been tracking similar indicators as Covid-19 hit different countries. Google data is released with a lag. The latest is as of October 05. All other data is as of Sunday, October 10.