Recovery tracker: Traffic congestion drops, power generation gap narrows

Overall mobility still rising, including at retail and recreation spots

Key weekly indicators showed signs of fatigue amid a resurgence of Covid-19 cases.
 

Traffic congestion dropped in key cities and the power generation gap over the pre-pandemic year narrowed shows the latest weekly data. Business Standard tracks these and other numbers like mobility, goods carried by the Indian Railways and pollution data on a weekly basis. They help provide a current sense of activity ahead of the release of official macroeconomic data, which often comes with a lag. Analysts globally have been using similar high frequency data to get a sense of the situation on the ground as different countries went into lockdown to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic. Authorities have initiated fresh lockdowns in parts of India even as new cases crossed over 25,000 a day from a low of under 10,000 daily cases earlier in the year. All the data is as of Sunday March 14th, except Google’s mobility data which is released with a lag. The latest is as of March 9th.

The amount of excess power generated over 2019 dropped to 11.1 per cent from 14.6 per cent in the previous week. This is based on a seven-day rolling average of power generated. The gap had touched over 15.4 per cent towards the end of January when cases were on a downward trend (see chart 1).

Fewer vehicles took to the roads in key cities. Traffic congestion was lower in both Mumbai and New Delhi, according to data from global location technology firm TomTom International. Mumbai traffic was down by over a third. New Delhi traffic was down by nearly a fifth compared to 2019 (see chart 2).

This is also reflected in lower emissions of nitrogen dioxide. The pollutant comes from industrial activity and vehicles. Delhi emissions are 15 per cent below 2019 levels. Mumbai emissions are down 85 per cent. Both figures are worse than the previous week (see chart 3,4).

Search engine Google tracks mobility based on anonymised location data. It shows that people in India overall are making more visits to retail and recreation spots, transit stations like subways and workplaces even as cases rise. Interestingly, shopping for essentials through grocery and pharmacy visits has seen the highest rise since the pandemic began. It is now over 20 per cent higher than normal (see chart 5).

The Indian Railways has seen 17-19 more freight revenues and quantity of goods transported. The comparison available is to 2020. The end of March is when the lockdown began last year (see chart 6).