Posted on 04/21/2020 2:03:49 AM PDT by blam
With increasingly politicized debates raging across developed countries whether or not to reopen economies as new coronavirus cases and deaths appear to be plateauing, India has made the decision to ease one of the world’s strictest lockdowns to allow some manufacturing and agricultural activity to resume after the economy suffered a sharp slowdown in recent weeks.
India’s shelter-in-place orders were imposed on March 24 and halted all but essential services, sparking an exodus of migrant workers and people who survive on daily wages out of India’s cities and toward villages in rural areas. Authorities picked up travelers in a fleet of buses and quarantined many of them in empty schools and other public buildings for 14 days. An even bigger problem, however, was the freefall in the Indian economy.
Here is why India is in a rush: according to Goldman’s current activity indicator (CAI), growth in India was reported at 2.8% in March, a 4.2% plunge relative to February, and the slowest uptick since the financial crisis. The sharp fall in March, is driven by both industrial and services, with the decline in exports, imports, auto sales, and PMI services being the biggest drivers.
Goldman also gathered a variety of high-frequency economic indicators, similar to how the banks looked at China’s economy in February to gauge the slowdown. Here are some of the findings across various sectors:
Industrial: •Daily electricity consumption collapsed in March (-30% yoy on March 27), and remains at low levels since then. (Exhibit 4). •The relative usage of coal also fell sharply in March. The fraction of total electricity generation through coal declined by almost 10 percentage points between 1st and 31st March 2020. Our rough estimate showed coal consumption was almost 11% weaker in the last week of March and first 12
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30K cases per day in the USA so 1,500 cases in India in one day seems rather low.
Let them reopen or not reopen their economy so long as it does not involve offshored American work, which should instead be restarted here in the US using American citizens.
1.3 billion people in India. 592 deaths from CoV-2 to date.
That’s down in the noise.
New cases in India DROPPED the last two days from 2,013, to 1250, to 924.
Fake News.
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