Economy heading towards sustained recovery: Data

Even as the new strain of the coronavirus and renewed lockdowns threaten to slow down global economic recovery, in India, major growth indicators — manufacturing, steel consumption, vehicle registrations, e-way bill generation, GST collection, petrol consumption and exports — have begun to show an uptick. A few of them have even reached their pre-Covid levels in December, financial ministry data showed.

Some laggards included diesel consumption, cement and natural gas consumption, which have so far not picked up.

The farm sector remained the bright spot with a year-on-year growth of nearly 3% in rabi sowing, accelerating tractor sales, and reservoirs’ live storage at 122% of decadal average last month. The demand for jobs under MGNREGS surged with a year-on-year growth of 57% in December.

E-way bills, a lead indicator of revenue collections and logistics growth, attained a double-digit acceleration of 17.5% after witnessing some moderation in November. Highway toll collections and counts too surpassed their pre-Covid levels. The average daily electronic toll collection stood at Rs 74.31 crore and the number of transactions at 44.65 lakh, as compared to pre-pandemic daily averages of Rs 57.9 crore and 34 lakh respectively, official data showed.

Railway freight traffic recorded a growth of 8.5% in December compared to previous year. Gross revenue from railway passenger bookings crossed Rs 1,432 crore in the first three weeks of December, which is 51% more than the same period last year.

The Indian basket crude oil too increased $51 a barrel on December 31 as against 47.05 a barrel on November 30, signalling upbeat oil market sentiment with increasing economic activity and Covid-19 vaccine prospects.

Non-food credit growth reached 9.4% in the third week of December compared to 5.9% in the same period last month. UPI payment transactions hit an all-time high of Rs 4.16 lakh crore in value and 223 crore in volume terms in December.

India’s foreign exchange reserves climbed to $580.8 billion as on December 25, covering more than 16 months of imports.

On the negative side, power consumption moderated from its double-digit yearly growth in October to 3.5% in November and 5.2% in December. Diesel consumption, which accounts for 40% of total fuel consumption in the country, was 3% lower than a year-ago period. Natural gas, and cement consumption remained tepid, indicating industry and construction have not picked up full swing.