Recovery tracker: Vehicle registrations in latest week up 15% over 2019

Better aviation traffic in seven days to Oct 2, freight numbers improve

Key high frequency indicators of economic activity trended higher in the latest week.

Fifteen per cent more vehicles were registered in the latest week than in the corresponding period of 2019. About 414,000 vehicles were registered in the seven day ended Sunday, compared to around 360,000 in the same period in 2019. This reverses the gap seen in the previous week.

The Indian Railways recorded higher freight growth numbers. The year-on-year growth in the volume of goods carried came in at 8.91 per cent compared to 7.17 per cent previously. The money it made from carrying these goods, called freight revenue, grew by 13.43 per cent compared to the previous week’s 12.26 per cent.

There were more people taking flights. For example, there were 375,000 passengers on October 2. It was 364,000 on the previous Sunday. There was an average of nearly 2700 flights taking off every day ferrying passengers on domestic trips.

Essential shopping picked up in the latest week. Grocery and pharmacy visits rose, shows mobility data from search engine Google. Retail and recreation visits were also higher than before.   Google uses anonymized location data to track how people are moving during the pandemic.

There was a drop in traffic in major cities, shows data from global location technology firm TomTom International. New Delhi traffic was down 51 per cent on Monday morning at 9am. Mumbai traffic fell 45 per cent.

Electricity consumption inched up last week and the gap over the 2019 levels increased to record highs as generation had declined sharply in corresponding week in 2019. Power producers generated 4,318 million units (MU) of electricity per day on average in the latest week. It was 4,302 million units per day in the previous week. In comparison, power generation was 3246 MU per day during the corresponding week in 2019.

Business Standard tracks these indicators as a way of getting a weekly picture of the economy.  Analysts globally have been using similar indicators since the pandemic began as official macroeconomic data is often released with a lag. This provides a more current idea of the economic effects of Covid-19.

The Google data is released with a lag. The latest is as of September 28. Traffic data is as of Monday morning 9am on 3rd October. All other data is as of Sunday, October 2.