KY­RON REG­IS

ky­ron.reg­is@guardian.co.tt

The busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty is not very con­fi­dent about Gov­ern­ment’s abil­i­ty to re­vi­talise the coun­try’s econ­o­my if the cur­rent COVID-19 pan­dem­ic con­tin­ues to ex­ert pres­sure on the econ­o­my.

This was re­vealed in a re­port pre­pared by Mar­ket Facts and Opin­ions (MFO) in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA), T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce and the Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce of T&T.

In the re­port, ti­tled “Topline Re­port: Wave 2 COVID-19 Busi­ness Out­look Study 2020,” it was as­sert­ed: “While sat­is­fac­tion in the Gov­ern­ment’s phased re­open­ing plan is high, there is low­er lev­els of con­fi­dence in the Gov­ern­ment to sus­tain the econ­o­my and in the ‘Road to Re­cov­ery’ Team, as there is much doubt in the Gov­ern­ment’s abil­i­ty to ef­fec­tive­ly ex­e­cute and de­liv­er on strate­gies out­lined.”

Ac­cord­ing to the MFO re­port, un­der 9 in 10 peo­ple not­ed their sat­is­fac­tion (‘Very sat­is­fied’ or ‘Sat­is­fied’) with the Gov­ern­ment’s phased re­open­ing plan for busi­ness­es. How­ev­er, in light of events tak­ing place in the glob­al econ­o­my, just over a third (36 per cent) of the re­spon­dents were con­fi­dent in the Gov­ern­ment’s abil­i­ty to put the right mea­sures in place to help sus­tain the econ­o­my.

More­over, on­ly four in ten (40 per cent) ex­pressed con­fi­dence in the ‘Road Map to Re­cov­ery’ Team's abil­i­ty to de­liv­er a work­able plan for the econ­o­my.

The re­port added that al­though there is gen­er­al­ly a high aware­ness of the COVID-19 ini­tia­tives an­nounced by the Gov­ern­ment to sup­port the econ­o­my, us­age lev­els are rel­a­tive­ly low. It not­ed that peo­ple have ei­ther ac­knowl­edged that they are await­ing the ex­e­cu­tion of these plans or ex­pressed that the ini­tia­tives are ‘Not Ap­plic­a­ble’ to their busi­ness.

The re­port in­di­cat­ed that three quar­ters of re­spon­dents had heard a lot about the ‘Salary Re­lief Grants’ while oth­er well-known ini­tia­tives were the VAT re­funds, an ease in in­ter­est and loan fa­cil­i­ties, waived penal­ties and de­ferred pay­ments on loans and VAT bonds.

It said on­ly about a quar­ter of the re­spon­dents had utilised waived penal­ties and de­ferred pay­ments on loans, Salary Re­lief Grants and ease in in­ter­est and pro­vi­sion of loan fa­cil­i­ties, while two in ten had re­ceived VAT re­funds.

It not­ed that about 4 in 10 of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty par­tic­i­pants were await­ing the ex­e­cu­tion of in­come tax re­funds while 3 in 10 are await­ing a soft loan and Salary Re­lief Grants. It al­so con­clud­ed that 4 in 10 per­sons have not heard about for­eign ex­change fund­ing for im­port­ing es­sen­tial items.

The re­port dis­closed that as life in the new nor­mal con­tin­ues and more busi­ness­es re­open their doors, un­cer­tain­ty re­mains a key fac­tor in the minds of busi­ness lead­ers. There al­so re­mains the threat­en­ing thought that po­ten­tial eco­nom­ic con­se­quences may be more dam­ag­ing than the phys­i­cal toll ex­act­ed.

The re­port ar­gued: “Re­gard­less of whether their busi­ness­es were deemed ‘es­sen­tial’ or ‘non-es­sen­tial’ with­in the re­cent lock­down pe­ri­od, busi­ness lead­ers fore­see rev­enue de­clines com­pared to their pre­vi­ous year of op­er­a­tion."

It con­tend­ed that this an­tic­i­pat­ed de­crease, cou­pled with the ex­pect­ed ad­her­ence to new­ly-en­forced hy­giene pro­to­cols, have placed added pres­sure on al­ready con­strained sec­tors.

How­ev­er, the MFO re­port in­di­cat­ed that busi­ness­es have since ac­cept­ed these mea­sures as a nec­es­sary part of pro­tect­ing both em­ploy­ees and cus­tomers. It re­vealed that this “has sim­ply be­come the way that busi­ness­es are run now.”