More people flying, registering vehicles
Transitspotslikebusandtrainstationsalsobusier
High-frequency indicators point towards slightly more bustle during the latest week. An additional 10,000-odd people travelled by air every day on an average in the latest week compared to the previous one. There were over 400,000 air passengers on Sunday, May 15, alone. The total number for the week was around 2.6 million
(see chart 1).
There was also more activity around transit areas like bus stops and train stations, according to data from search engine Google, which collates mobility numbers for various categories of places using anonymised location data. The last two days for which data was available showed the highest transit area visits since*
February 2020, when the records first became available (see chart 2).
Power generation stayed high but did not rise further despite a heatwave and record high temperatures in north and north-west India. Power utilities across the country generated 4,600 million units of electricity on average per day during the week ended May 15, 2022 — up 14.8 per cent from 4,009 MUS generated during the corresponding week in CY19. Power generation was 1.25 per cent higher on week-on-week basis (see chart 3).
Indians registered a total of 384,594 vehicles in the latest week. This is 5.2 per cent lower than the corresponding week in 2019 before Covid-19 struck India. But the gap is smaller than the previous week when registrations were down 18.5 per cent (see chart 4).
Traffic congestion was down in both Mumbai and New Delhi on Monday morning at 9 am, shows data from global location technology firm Tomtom International. It was 56 per cent lower than 2019 levels in New Delhi, compared to 39 per cent below 2019 recorded in the previous week. This could be on account of Buddha Purnima, which is a government holiday. Mumbai’s traffic congestion was down 63 per cent compared to 48 per cent previously (see chart 5).
Railway numbers, meanwhile, continued to hold steady. The year-on-year growth in the quantity of goods that the Indian Railways carried was 14.81 per cent for the latest week compared to 14.87 per cent seen previously. The growth in the money that the Indian Railways made from carrying these goods, called freight revenue, was 20.57 per cent compared to 23.06 per cent in the previous week (see chart 6).
Business Standard tracks these indicators to get a weekly picture of how the economy is doing since official macroeconomic data is often released with a lag. Analysts globally have been tracking similar indicators to assess the situation on the ground, which has been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. The traffic update is as of May 16; Google data is from May 11; and other information is as of Sunday, May 15.