Recovery Tracker: Retail & recreation visits higher than pre-Covid days

With most of the Covid-19 curbs relaxed, more people stepped out for retail and rec­reational activities in the latest week than they did in the pre-pandemic days. Their number was, however, lower compared to the previous week.

Similarly, there was a rise in the usage of public transport and office visits were also up on a week-on-week basis even as Covid-19 cases have incre­a­sed lately. According to a government bulletin on Monday, 2,183 Covid-19 cases were repo­r­t­ed over the last 24 hours, up 90 per cent from a day before.

While retail and recreation visits were 8.6 per cent higher than before the pandemic took hold, visits to transit stations were 27 per cent higher, shows mobility data from Google, which tracks peoples’ movements using anonymised location data. This helps understand mobility trends across countries during the pandemic. Workplace visits also increased (see chart 1).

Traffic congestion, however, dipped in major cities, shows data from global location technology firm TomTom International. It was 25 per cent below 2019 levels in New Delhi. The Mumbai number showed a 22 per cent gap over 2019. The gap for both cities widened over the previous week, suggesting a decline in traffic on a week-on-week basis. (see chart 2).

Vehicle registrations dec­li­ned last week and remained below 2019 levels. Registra­ti­ons were down 9.2 per cent over the same week in 2019, compared to an average 11 per cent gap during the week ending April 10, 2022. In all, 326,230 vehicles were registered across India during the week ending Sunday, April 18, down from 376,107 vehicles in the previous week, shows government data (see chart 3).

The number of airline passengers also increased week-on-week and reached a post-pandemic high of 4.08 lakh on April 17. Airlines carried around 3.67 lakh travellers per day on average during the week ending April 17 — up 12 per cent from 3.28 lakh in the previous week (see chart 4).

The Railways, meanwhile, registered lower growth in the quantity of goods carried during the week (6.46 per cent). It was up 8.01 per cent year-on-year in the previous week. The amount of revenue it made from carrying these goods, called freight revenue, grew at 15.92 per cent over the same week last year, better than the 13.74 per cent Y-o-Y growth in the previous week (see chart 5).

Power generation continu­ed to rise amid soaring temperatures. Power utilities generated 4,512 million units of electricity on average per day during the week ending April 17. This is 19.2 per cent higher than the 3,784 million units for the corresponding week in 2019. Power generation was, however, marginally down 0.9 per cent compared to the previous week (see chart 6).

Business Standard tracks these indicators to get a weekly picture of how the economy is doing since official macroeconomic data is often released with a lag. Analysts globally have been tracking similar indicators.