Recovery tracker: More flights, but decline in vehicle registrations

Power generation was higher than in the previous week

Some high-frequency indicators of economic activity showed an uptick in the latest week.
 

The vehicle registration gap over the pre-pandemic vehicle registrations widened last week. There were 294,145 registrations during the week ending August 21. This is 31.6 per cent lower than the 429,920 registrations seen during the same period in 2019. The gap was 2.54 per cent over the previous week (see chart 1).
 

More passengers caught flights. There was also a rise in the number of daily flights. There were around 348,592 passengers on average in the last seven days of the week. The flights numbered 2,645. The numbers showed a rising trend amid a string of holidays including Independence Day on Monday (see chart 2).
 

Retail and recreation visits were 15.4 per cent higher than they were before the pandemic took hold. Search engine Google tracks how people are moving during the pandemic using anonymised location data. Workplace visits showed a decline amid multiple public holidays during the previous week (see chart 3).

The Indian Railways recorded lower growth in the quantity of goods carried. It grew at 4.47 per cent for the latest week compared to 6.37 per cent previously. The amount of money it made from carrying these goods, called freight revenue, was up 17.86 per cent in the latest week compared to 19.23 per cent previously (see chart 4).
 

Power generation in the country inched up last week and the gap over 2019 levels widened due to higher generation. The power producers generated 4,314 million units (MUs) of electricity per day on average in the latest week. It was 4,299 MUs per day in the previous week. In comparison, power generation was 3,539 MUs per day during the corresponding week in 2019 (see chart 2).
 

Monday 9 am traffic congestion saw a major increase, according to data from global location technology firm TomTom International. New Delhi traffic congestion was down 28 per cent compared to 2019. Mumbai traffic was down 27 per cent (see chart 6).

Business Standard tracks these indicators as a way of getting a weekly picture of how the economy is doing. Analysts globally have been tracking similar indicators as official macroeconomic data is often released with a lag. Such high-frequency indicators help understand how the economy is reacting to the pandemic, and the impact of various government efforts to control its effects.
 

The Google data is released with a lag. The latest is as of August 18. The traffic data is as of Monday, August 21. All other data is as of Sunday.