StatsGuru: Tracking signs of recovery in the consumer sector

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There has been some hope of late that consumer demand is reviving. This could be driven by employee compensation, which, as Table 1 shows, has displayed sharply increasing growth in recent quarters. However, urban consumption might not be matched by growth in rural consumption; as Table 2 shows, rural wage growth has stagnated after sharp rises till end-2013. Fast-moving consumer goods, as estimated by Nielsen in Table 3, could be growing marginally faster - but not reaching the sharp rises of a few years ago. Passenger car sales, as shown in Table 4, are not showing declines - and the trend looks to be upwards.

Two-wheelers, meanwhile, seem to display the opposite trend in Table 5, a hint again that rural demand is not recovering. Revenue growth of big listed retailers, in Table 6, however, does seem to show a slight recovery after several bad quarters. One relatively unambiguous signal for recovering demand is in the aviation sector, visible in Table 7.