On Monday according to a Nomura note on account of divergent trends in indicators like mobility and employment during the previous week the pace of economic recovery had improved. In the last week of August 9 NIBRI, The Nomura India Business Resumption Index had increased to 71.8 after being stepped down around the 70 marks for the past three weeks.
The Nomura India Business Resumption Index ( NIBRI) is a weekly tracker of the pace at which the economic activity normalizes. The note said that while the Googles retail and recreation mobility index and Apples driving index picked up incrementally, the Googles workplace mobility worsened, the labor participation rate also inched up to 50.6 percent compared to 40.5 percent last week but the unemployment rate rises to 8.7 percent from 7.2 percent a week earlier.
The Power demand had also contracted by about 0.8 percent which was an improvement for -2 percent recorded in the previous week. Nomura said that overall The Nomura India Business Resumption Index (NIBRI) remained largely stagnant at nearly 30 percentage points below the pre-pandemic levels. According to the data available for July so far suggested an uneven recovery which had largely reflected pen-tup demand adding rural demand performed better comparatively. While a second wave if COVID-19 pandemic cases combined with a rolling wave in the traditionally safer states like in the South and the East, increase risks of protracted quasi lockdown measures and the tempering of sequential improvement in the activity once the post lockdown momentum ebbs.
The weekly tracker has also shown a bumpy recovery path against the expected smooth upward curve. During the end of the month April, after hitting a lockdown low of about 45 The Nomura India Business Resumption Index (NIBRI) made a sharp recovery by mid-June to 70.5. As multiple states imposed the fresh lockdowns in July the recovery lost its momentum. This reflected in the NIBRI which drops to about 66.8 in the week ending July 12 before stagnating at the 70 marks. During the ongoing fiscal the Nomura estimated a 5.2 percent contraction for India’s growth. Kunal Kundu an economist with society general GSC Pvt said that we are worried that the economic recovery will remain unstable with the rising COVID-19 infection rates contraction would be deeper and this would prolong the uncertainty especially around the jobs and salary cuts.
