Recovery tracker: Spike in retail, recreation visits as mobility expands

More flights and higher electricity generation amid lower Covid-19 cases

There was a step-up in mobility amid lower Covid-19 cases.

Retail and recreation visits were at their highest since search engine Google began to track the indicator. Google tracks visits to various categories of places as a way of understanding how people are moving amid the pandemic. Retail and recreation visits are 10.7 per cent higher than they were in the early part of 2020, before the pandemic took hold.

Total number of cases are down to 1,549 in the last 24 hours, according to government data released on Monday. It had touched nearly 350,000 cases daily in January on account of the Omicron variant.  

The total number of air passengers (2.4 million) in the latest week was 0.5 per cent higher than the previous week. The number of flights this week were 18,395 compared to 18,050 in the previous one.

Power generation grew further last week as day temperatures rose across the country. Power utilities across the country generated 4,329 million units of electricity on average per day during the week ended March 20, 2022 (based on reporting day data) up 5.5 per cent year-on-year from 4,104 MUs during the corresponding week in FY21. The generation was however up 21 per cent over the corresponding week in FY20 and 2.6 per cent higher on a week-on-week basis.

Vehicle registration showed signs of slackening. There were 304,797 vehicles registered for the latest week. This is 32.9 per cent lower than the corresponding week in 2019. The gap was 20.8 per cent in the previous week.

There was a dip in traffic congestion on Monday morning. New Delhi’s traffic congestion was 35 per cent below 2019 levels compared to 34 per cent in the previous week. Mumbai’s traffic congestion was 44 per cent below 2019 levels, compared to 43 per cent previously.

There was also a slowdown in the growth seen in statistics from the Indian Railways. Growth in the quantity of goods carried was down to 1.41 per cent compared to 7.83 per cent previously. The money it made from carrying these goods, also called freight revenue, grew 5.39 per cent compared to 9.87 per cent previously.

Business Standard tracks these indicators as a way of keeping a weekly track of how the economy is doing. Official macroeconomic data often comes with a lag of months. Analysts globally have been tracking similar indicators. It gives a sense of how pandemic restrictions are affecting the economy on a more immediate basis. Google’s data is as of March 17. The traffic data is for Monday morning. All other data is as of Sunday, March 20.