Weekly economic indicators: Delhi emissions slip, Mumbai traffic improves

Workplace visits are rising again

Traffic and emissions in the capital city fell as its people grappled with new cases of Covid-19, shows data for the latest week. Government officials Friday said that the wave now appears to be on the decline.

Business Standard tracks mobility, power generation and goods that the Indian Railways carries, in addition to emissions and traffic data in key cities on a weekly basis. These provide a current picture of the economy ahead of the release of official data. Analysts globally have been tracking similar indicators to get a sense of the fast-changing situation on the ground as countries entered lockdowns to stop the spread of the pandemic. Mobility data appears with a lag and is as of December 7. All other data is for the week ending Sunday, December 13.

The traffic gap between Mumbai and New Delhi widened for the latest week, shows data from global location technology firm TomTom International. Mumbai has recovered around 75 per cent of 2019 traffic. New Delhi is closer to 66 per cent. New Delhi had seen higher traffic earlier before slipping in recent weeks (see chart 1).  

Business Standard tracks nitrogen dioxide emissions. They come from industrial activity and vehicles. Emissions slipped below 2019 levels for Delhi after having largely normalised after the unlocking. Mumbai emissions remained lackluster based on Bandra locality data (see charts 2,3).

Search engine Google tracks visits to various categories of places based on location data. It showed that workplace visits have come back to over 80 per cent of normal levels. Time spent at home was at its lowest in over eight months (see chart 4).

The Indian Railways continued to carry more goods than 2019. The quantity and earnings from them were lower than the previous week. Goods carried showed an 8.3 per cent gain over 2019 compared to 11.3 per cent for the previous week. Earnings showed a seven per cent gain compared to 9.8 per cent in the previous week (see chart 5).

The growth in electricity generation and demand remains in positive territory but is once again waning after a slight bump up post -Diwali. Electricity generation was up 2.7 per cent year on year (yoy) on average last week against around six per cent yoy growth the week before. Power demand has generally been soft in the post-festival period compared to a month in the run-up to Diwali when it was up 10-12 per cent (see chart 6).