Mint Tracker: Indian economy steady in June but consumer segment remains fragile

The Indian economy showed a marginal improvement in the 16 high-frequency indicators tracked by Mint in June compared to their performance six months ago, as per the latest Mint macro tacker. Eight of these indicators were above their five-year average trends, whereas three were below it. In comparison to six months ago, only six of these indicators were above their five-year average and four were below it. However, no major movement in the indicators has happened since the previous month.

The Mint macro tracker, which provides a monthly comprehensive report on the state of the economy, based on trends in 16 high-frequency indicators. The tracker has been running since October 2018.

For each indicator, the value in each month is assigned a colour coding (red, amber and green) to denote where it lies relative to the five-year average (red denotes worse, amber denotes it is in line with the average range, and green denotes better).

While the economy shows signs of sustainable growth, there is a divide in the performance of the indicators: none of the four indicators in the consumer economy segment has been in green in a year, while the producer economy and ease of living segments have largely been in the green.

Even though most of the indicators largely remained stable as compared to May, some of them like tractor sales, domestic air passenger traffic, labour force participation rate, and PMI composite showed some slight improvement. Meanwhile, CPI inflation, rupee, labour-intensive sectors export, trade balance showed some decline.

Methodology note: While calculating the five-year average, data for some indicators for April-May 2020 and April-May 2021 have been removed to eliminate lockdown-induced skews in the trend. However, the five-year averages may still show high figures due to sustained base effect in several indicators in 2021 and 2022.

Monthly standings will get updated retrospectively as more data comes in.

For inflation, the red/green coding is reversed.

Also Read: India continues to shine among emerging market peers: Mint tracker