Consumer demand expected to rise during festive season: Icra

Ratings agency Icra said that confidence among customers is on the rise, and this is expected to boost demand in the festive season, though numbers from August and first half of September remained a mixed bag. The agency added that the temporary boost was because of the restrictions eased across states, after the second wave of Covid-19 subsided. The upward trend also comes on the back of gradual improvement in the economic situation, reduction of high healthcare costs related to second wave and improvement of Covid-19 vaccines coverage, it added.

In October, the agency perceives an improvement in the performance of high frequency indicators, as the increasing confidence among consumers should enhance during the festive season.

As compared to July, eight out of the 15 high-performance indicators weakened in August partly on the back of base normalisation, Icra said. Adding to that, 13 non-financial indicators as compared to last year in the corresponding year, was not even, it said.

FASTag collections increased in August

It was also noted by the agency that passenger vehicles output was constrained by the non-availability of semi conductors, though the increase was witnessed in output of CIL, electricity, ports cargo traffic, GST e-way bills, non-oil merchandise exports etc.

For this month, so far, generation of GST e-way bills on a daily average is just above 2 million, and was similar to August. However, it said that pre-festive season stocking should increase this metric in October. Data for early September 2021 remain mixed, it added.

Retail and recreation mobility increased by 16%, which was below the baseline by the end of July. In August, FASTag collections had risen by 3.4% to Rs 3,080 crore MoM. This was among non-financial indicators.

On a YoY basis rail freight growth has halved to 8.2% between September 1-10. However, this is on the account of the base effect related to the incentives extended last year kicking in, ICRA said.