Recovery tracker: Workplace visits at record high; air traffic declines

India’s workplace visits are now higher by nearly a third more than before the pandemic took hold.

The metric is 31 per cent higher than the baseline value during January and February 2020 before the Covid-19 pandemic became widespread and the government imposed a national lockdown. Search engine Google tracks mobility using anonymised location data. It tracks visits to various categories of places. Retail and recreation visits are 13.7 per cent higher.

The Indian Railways recorded an 8.7 per cent year-on-year increase in the quantity of goods it carried for the latest week compared to 7.3 per cent earlier. Freight revenue is up 17.4 per cent compared to 16.1 per cent previously.

Electricity consumption in the country grew last week and the gap over 2019 levels widened due to higher generation. The power producers generated 4,654 million units (MUs) of electricity per day on average in the latest week. It was 4,517 MUs per day in the previous week. In comparison, power generation was 3,880 MUs per day during the corresponding week in 2019.

People registered 372,000 vehicles during the latest week. This is similar to what was seen in the same period in 2019. This is the second week that has seen vehicle registrations at levels close to pre-pandemic figures.

Monday 9 am traffic congestion is still lower than in 2019 in major cities, shows data from global location technology firm TomTom International. It was 31 per cent lower in New Delhi. This is an improvement over the 36 per cent decline recorded in the previous week. Mumbai traffic congestion was down 43 per cent compared to the 32 per cent decline previously recorded.

There has been a drop in the number of air passengers and flights, too. There were around 314,000 air passengers as of Sunday, September 4, based on a rolling seven-day average. It was around 331,000 as of Sunday, August 28. The number of flights has fallen from 2,597 to 2,553 in the same period.

Business Standard tracks these indicators as a way of getting a weekly picture of economic activity. Official macroeconomic indicators are often released with a lag. Analysts globally use similar indicators. It helps provide a quicker way to understand the effects of the pandemic on the ground.

The Google data is released with a lag. The latest is as of August 28. The traffic numbers are as of Monday, September 5. All other data is for the week ending Sunday, September 4.