The movement of trucks is a fairly good indicator of a country's economic and production activity. Judging by that parameter, productivity in India has not picked up much in the fifth week of the lockdown. Even as the government has been issuing guidelines for easing restrictions on manufacturing and since April 20, the improvement at the ground level has been marginal.

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Lack of drivers, warehouse staff and a complex, three-tiered regulatory framework has kept movement of goods as low as 25 percent of capacity this week.

This figure ranged between 20 and 25 percent of capacity in the last week, up from just about 10 percent before April 10, according to a survey of 30,000 fleet owners by fleet management platform LocoNav.

LocoNav expects this may go up to as much as 35-40 percent by the next week subject to availability of labour and drivers. The additional traction, the start-up expects, will come from the movement of non-essential items.

The All India Transporters' Welfare Association, however, says, movement currently is as low as 15 percent, but steadily improving and can reach 30 percent capacity by this week, according to AITWA Joint Secretary Abhishek Gupta.

Goods movement on the ground has been slow, because of the challenges of low availability of labour at warehouses and lack of coordination between various the centre, state and local regulatory bodies.

"... (there is)some improvement on the ground but still very gradual. Availability of labour remains the biggest challenge", Vivek Gambhir, MD, Godrej Consumer Products Limited told CNBC-TV18.

"Truck movement was down to 10 percent in the middle of March within a matter of three days. It started moving up to around 25 percent by the end of March and then moved to near zero by April 2-3, and right until April 18-19, there was hardly any movement. Larger factories got permissions to operate last Thursday, and now we are at a third of the pre-shut down movement in March, mostly in the FMCG and agriculture space", Anjani Mandal, co-founder and CEO of logistics technology platform Fortigo, told CNBC-TV18.

"Long-distance travel will never reach a hundred percent efficiency as long as there are hotspots in the middle of the route", Mandal added.

States which have implemented a stricter lockdown, such as Maharashtra and Telangana, have only been allowing movement of essential commodities.

Sources tell CNBC-TV18 that FMCG companies are seeing 13-15 percent of warehouse operations, while the extent of operations is 40-60 percent for dairy giants such as Amul and Mother Dairy, as they are located in more remote locations.

Core industrials, construction materials are not seeing much movement as permissions for large-scale infrastructure projects has been stalled at least until May 4.

Agriculture movement too has picked up, and is seeing zero stoppage where goods are easily classified as essential, Fortigo told CNBC-TV18.

A clear trend that will emerge, however, is that companies will begin to focus more and more on spot procurement, until logistics supply comes back to normal levels, Fortigo said.

First Published:Apr 23, 2020 12:24 PM IST