Recovery tracker: Rail and power show some gains in first month of new year

Mobility and traffic congestion see a drop

There is more electricity being generated and trains are carrying more goods as the first month of the calendar year draws to a close.

Other indicators like traffic, pollution levels and mobility showed signs of slowing down. Business Standard tracks these high frequency indicators weekly. They give a sense of the situation on the ground ahead of official economic data which is often released with a lag. Analysts globally have been tracking similar indicators to get a current sense of the economy as different countries went into lockdown to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic.

The year-on-year gains in power generation jumped to 8 per cent for the latest week, compared to 3.8 per cent in the previous one. The gap is now at its widest since mid-November, shows data as of Sunday, January 24th (see chart 1).

 

The Indian Railways also showed higher year-on-year gains than the previous week. Trains carried 8.5 per cent more goods by quantity for the seven days ending Sunday, January 24. It was 6.9 per cent in the previous week. The gain in earnings from the goods carried rose to 6.7 per cent from 5.2 per cent in the previous week (see chart 2).

Traffic congestion declined on Monday, January 25, in both Mumbai and New Delhi. It was down 52 per cent from 2019 levels at 9am on Monday morning in New Delhi showed data from global location technology firm TomTom International. It had fallen 46 per cent in Mumbai. Congestion in both cities was lower than in the previous week (see chart 3).

 

Business Standard also tracks emissions of nitrogen dioxide. The pollutant comes from industrial activity and from vehicles. A dip can point to lower activity. There had been a significant decline at the height of the lockdown. Emissions in Delhi had fallen by over 70 per cent. Delhi emissions are 12 per cent higher for the week ending Sunday 24th January than the previous year. The year-on-year gains are slightly lower than was seen in the previous week.  Mumbai emissions, based on Bandra locality data remain subdued (see charts 4 and 5).

 

Fewer people are stepping out to shop. Search engine Google uses anonymised location data to track visits to various categories of places. The data appears with a lag. The latest is as of January 19th.  Visits to recreation and retail spots had come back to around 75 per cent of pre-Covid levels earlier in January.  It has slipped back to below 70 per cent as per the latest numbers. Essential shopping through grocery and pharmacy visits had been nearly 13 per cent higher than normal earlier in January. Gains have now dropped to 1.3 per cent. Visits to both parks and transit stations have fallen. Workplace visits had touched a high of nearly 88 per cent normalcy. This is down to 76.3 per cent (see chart 6).