I was in Rio Claro re­cent­ly and had cause to talk to a small busi­ness own­er. For the pur­pose of this ar­ti­cle, I will call him by his ini­tials CG.

CG owns and op­er­ates a food busi­ness, es­sen­tial­ly sell­ing grilled foods, but on Sat­ur­days he al­so sells soup.

Ac­cord­ing to CG his best days of busi­ness are usu­al­ly Fri­days and Sat­ur­days, but since the pan­dem­ic, in his es­ti­ma­tion, things have sig­nif­i­cant­ly wors­ened.

Ac­cord­ing to the gen­tle­man, pri­or to the pan­dem­ic, he sold on Sat­ur­days 50 bowls of soup and 80 box­es of grilled food. These num­bers he said have es­sen­tial­ly been halved.

“Look at the state of the place at the mo­ment. No one is com­ing to buy any­thing and this has been go­ing on for al­most a year now. When will the gov­ern­ment re­alise that these mea­sures are killing busi­ness? I am se­ri­ous­ly con­sid­er­ing look­ing for a job, if I can get one, be­cause I have a fam­i­ly to take care of,” he said in frus­tra­tion.

The small busi­ness own­er has not sat by and al­lowed his in­vest­ment to go un­der. He has tak­en mea­sures that he hoped would help.

CG has tried to re­duce his costs by lay­ing off one of his two em­ploy­ees. He has start­ed mak­ing break­fast, try­ing to open up a new rev­enue stream and still the busi­ness is un­der tremen­dous pres­sure. Luck­i­ly for him, he does not have to pay rent, since he op­er­ates out of a build­ing he had con­struct­ed a decade ago on his fam­i­ly’s prop­er­ty.

“If I was rent­ing the busi­ness would have to close for sure,” he lament­ed.

I am sure his sto­ry is not unique. In fact, some may ar­gue, he is lucky not to have to pay a rent. But this sto­ry, while anec­do­tal, I sus­pect is be­ing played out all over the coun­try and is a rea­son­able mea­sure of the kind of chal­lenge that small busi­ness­es are fac­ing in T&T.

Small and mi­cro en­ter­pris­es are the lifeblood of economies.

They are par­tic­u­lar­ly im­por­tant to lo­cal economies.

In ar­eas like Rio Claro and Ma­yaro, oth­er than the oil and gas com­pa­nies and their ser­vice providers, most of the jobs are through small busi­ness­es.

Ac­cord­ing to an ar­ti­cle in Forbes Mag­a­zine, there are 11 ad­van­tages that small busi­ness­es have over larg­er en­ter­pris­es.

1. Cus­tom ap­proach: Small busi­ness­es can of­fer a more per­son­alised and cus­tomised ser­vice.

2. Em­pha­sis on dis­rup­tive in­no­va­tion: Small busi­ness­es like­ly ex­ist be­cause larg­er com­pa­nies are not serv­ing cus­tomers ef­fec­tive­ly.

3. Flex­i­bil­i­ty and less bu­reau­cra­cy: Small busi­ness­es can be more flex­i­ble in how they re­ward or recog­nise staff and how they deal with cus­tomers.

4. Cre­ativ­i­ty: Small busi­ness­es can win through cre­ativ­i­ty.

5. Lev­el of care: Small busi­ness­es pro­vide a lev­el of care and in­volve­ment by name-brand peo­ple that most cor­po­ra­tions aren’t struc­tured or can’t af­ford to pro­vide.

6. Adapt­abil­i­ty: Busi­ness is all about peo­ple, and small busi­ness­es have the ad­van­tage of know­ing each and every client re­al­ly well.

7. Pas­sion with pur­pose: Pas­sion with a pur­pose ig­nites pos­si­bil­i­ties. Suc­cess­ful small busi­ness­es have no short­age of pas­sion.

8. Ac­tive lis­ten­ing: Small busi­ness­es can dif­fer­en­ti­ate them­selves by pro­vid­ing a feed­back loop that en­ables two-way com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

9. Speed and agili­ty: De­ci­sion mak­ing and im­ple­men­ta­tion are much faster with small busi­ness­es.

10. One-on-one mag­ic: The ad­van­tage that small­er busi­ness­es have over larg­er com­pa­nies is their abil­i­ty to con­nect one-on-one with their clients.

11. In­tan­gi­ble, unique ben­e­fits: By fo­cus­ing on the broad­er ben­e­fits of­fer­ing, small busi­ness own­ers can com­pete with larg­er com­pa­nies.

It is the small busi­ness­es and their suc­cess or de­struc­tion that will de­ter­mine how many peo­ple lose their jobs when this coun­try emerges from the pan­dem­ic, like­ly in 2022.

Over the last week, many of the larg­er com­pa­nies on the T&T Stock Ex­change have been re­leas­ing their an­nu­al re­sults for 2020 and while al­most all, with the no­table ex­cep­tion be­ing Na­tion­al Flour Mills which al­most tripled its prof­its, all had low­er in­come and low­er prof­its, they man­aged to stay in the black.

The num­bers showed at least two things, that the larg­er en­ti­ties re­mained re­silient, even in a black swan event like a pan­dem­ic, and that the busi­ness­es were in the main be­ing well man­aged.

No one can blame the gov­ern­ment for the pan­dem­ic and, to some ex­tent, it is true that the gov­ern­ment’s ac­tions have been suc­cess­ful in keep­ing us safe. Where this gov­ern­ment has failed, and failed bad­ly, is in the way it has bal­anced the need for lives and liveli­hoods.

One of the things the Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion is good at is bend­ing the truth and the use of smoke and mir­rors to en­sure the coun­try buys in­to its nar­ra­tive.

In the last year, it blamed the sec­ond wave on the open­ing of bars and re­fused to ac­knowl­edge that it was the gen­er­al elec­tion that led to the sec­ond spike. We saw with our own eyes politi­cians and sup­port­ers from the red and yel­low camps gath­er­ing in num­bers that were well out­side of the COVID-19 re­stric­tions and some of them al­so con­tract­ing COVID-19, yet when asked if it was the elec­tion that led to the spike the of­fi­cials con­sis­tent­ly avoid­ed the ques­tion, blam­ing it on bars in­stead.

The in­crease we are see­ing again is no doubt due to the nec­es­sary ac­tivism that oc­curred around the un­for­tu­nate mur­der of An­drea Bharath and not due to any open­ing of busi­ness­es.

Restau­rants and bars have been brought to their knees by the gov­ern­ment’s mea­sures and, in some cas­es, have been forced to serve al­co­hol off the books, as in the days of the US pro­hi­bi­tion, be­cause of a mea­sure that makes no sense.

Where do we see in restau­rants peo­ple drink­ing a glass of wine or two, or cel­e­brat­ing with their fam­i­lies and be­com­ing so row­dy and out of con­trol that it is like­ly to lead to su­per spread­er events?

Even when the num­bers were con­sis­tent­ly low the gov­ern­ment pre­ferred to keep bars from hav­ing in-house cus­tomers, obliv­i­ous to how bars op­er­ate and why you need peo­ple in the busi­ness to make mon­ey.

We have to be fair to mem­bers of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty who have tak­en all the mea­sures asked to re­open safe­ly. It is al­most im­pos­si­ble to en­ter a busi­ness with­out a mask and sani­tis­ing and, in most cas­es, so­cial dis­tanc­ing ad­hered to.

Cit­i­zens have ad­hered to the warn­ings. To a large mea­sure, peo­ple have ac­cept­ed the gov­ern­ment’s urg­ings and act­ed re­spon­si­bly. But the ad­min­is­tra­tion has failed them in many ways.

The re­open­ing of the econ­o­my has not re­ceived the kind of fo­cus need­ed to ac­com­mo­date busi­ness and com­merce. This I sus­pect comes from a place that still does not trust free en­ter­prise and the de­ba­cle sur­round­ing the pro­cure­ment of vac­cines speaks to that dat­ed no­tion that a mixed econ­o­my is the way to go and not a com­mit­ment to free en­ter­prise.

We are in a very dan­ger­ous po­si­tion with this econ­o­my. We con­tin­ue to bor­row like there is no to­mor­row and spend on non-pro­duc­tive sec­tors of the econ­o­my.

The gov­ern­ment is em­bold­ened by a weak op­po­si­tion and a coun­try re­signed to its fate.

Tues­day’s ar­rival of the first set of As­traZeneca vac­cines from the CO­V­AX fa­cil­i­ty has been met with lit­tle or no en­thu­si­asm as the pop­u­la­tion re­alis­es that this is but a drop in the buck­et and while we are all hap­py some vac­cines have ar­rived, it is clear that the gov­ern­ment’s mis­han­dling of this mat­ter threat­ens to keep us much longer in this sense of paral­y­sis.

The 33,600 vac­cines will be enough to in­oc­u­late up to 16,800 na­tion­als with each per­son re­ceiv­ing two shots. That will bring the to­tal num­ber to 17,800 vac­ci­nat­ed in a coun­try of about 1.4 mil­lion. In oth­er words, a to­tal of just over one per cent of the coun­try will be vac­ci­nat­ed.

For peo­ple like CG, this will not be enough and one won­ders how many more busi­ness­es will be forced to give up be­fore this pan­dem­ic is over.