MOBILITY DATA: Toll data shows usage up last week in Italy, Spain, France

Quantum Commodity Intelligence - Toll data from global operator Atlantia showed usage of its roads in the last week in Italy reached the closest to pre-pandemic levels so far, after improving 4 percentage points on the week to just 2.4% below the 2019 equivalent week.

The number of daily Covid cases in Italy has eased massively since a third-wave peak of around 24,000 cases in March, although cases have been creeping up in the first weeks of July, according to Johns Hopkins University data, and the country remains in a state of emergency.

Data for Spain for the week ending July 18 also improved by 1 pp to -6.3% and for France by 0.7 pp to -4.7% against 2019, although the French data also showed a slight dip of 0.2% versus the same week in 2020.

Italy was 13.9% up versus 2020 and Spain up by 13.4%.

Atlantia operates 3,256 km of roads in Italy, 1,768 km in France and 1,105 km in Spain.

Meanwhile, toll data for the company's 4,321 km of roads in Brazil dipped for the second week running, by 0.5 pp to -2.4% against 2019.

Elsewhere in the Americas, there was an improvement though and Mexico rebounded 0.8 pp to 1.3% above after hitting an 11-week low for the company's 876 km of roads.

Chile hit a post-pandemic peak of 8.7% over 2019 following an 8.7 pp weekly gain, marking only the second time the country has seen better than pre-pandemic usage on Atlantia's 1,100 km of roads.