GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

A joint sur­vey of the T&T Coali­tion of Ser­vices In­dus­tries (TTC­SI) and the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) has found that as a re­sult of the coun­try’s COVID-19 mit­i­ga­tion mea­sures, 36 per cent of the busi­ness­es sur­veyed have ter­mi­nat­ed full time em­ploy­ees and 55 per cent have ter­mi­nat­ed part time or con­trac­tu­al em­ploy­ees.

Most­ly small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es (SMEs) took part in the sur­vey which was done to as­sess the eco­nom­ic im­pact of COVID-19 on ser­vices and man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tors.

The sur­vey found that 91 per cent of to­tal re­spon­dents em­ployed on av­er­age be­tween one to 50 part-time or con­tract em­ploy­ees and 70 per cent of all re­spon­dents em­ployed be­tween one to five per­sons part time or on con­trac­tu­al re­la­tion­ships.

The ter­mi­na­tion of these em­ploy­ees will have neg­a­tive con­se­quences on the na­tion­al econ­o­my, un­em­ploy­ment, pover­ty, qual­i­ty of life and stan­dard of liv­ing, the sur­vey not­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice, a small en­ter­prise is de­fined as hav­ing be­tween six to 25 em­ploy­ees and sales of $250,000 to $5,000,000 and a medi­um en­ter­prise as hav­ing be­tween 26-50 em­ploy­ees and sales of $5,000,000 to $10,000,000 (ex­clud­ing re­al es­tate).

To gauge the size of busi­ness­es cap­tured in the sur­vey with­out re­al sales da­ta, the as­sump­tion was made to de­fine a com­pa­ny with 100 or few­er em­ploy­ees as an SMEs.

The sur­vey re­gard­ed SMEs as im­por­tant con­trib­u­tors to job cre­ation and eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment, adding that ac­cord­ing to the World Bank, for­mal SMEs con­tribute up to 40 per cent of na­tion­al in­come (GDP) in emerg­ing economies.

In T&T, it has been es­ti­mat­ed that SMEs ac­count for over 50 per cent of GDP.

Re­spon­dents were al­so asked about in­no­v­a­tive strate­gies im­ple­ment­ed in re­sponse to the pan­dem­ic.

Thir­ty-eight per cent sim­ply did not im­ple­ment any new mea­sures, ei­ther be­cause their op­er­a­tions were con­sid­ered non-es­sen­tial and had to be sig­nif­i­cant­ly scaled back or be­cause the na­ture of their ac­tiv­i­ties was not con­ducive to such strate­gies, the sur­vey not­ed.

It al­so not­ed that many ser­vice providers, es­pe­cial­ly firms in ICT, ed­u­ca­tion, and pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices, were able to shift their ac­tiv­i­ties on­line.

Oth­er ser­vice providers and man­u­fac­tur­ers shift­ed the ad­min­is­tra­tive as­pects of their busi­ness on­line and ei­ther scaled back their op­er­a­tions or changed their method of prod­uct de­liv­ery to fa­cil­i­tate curb side pick-up, de­liv­ery for on­line or tele­phone or­ders or sales at fac­to­ry out­lets, re­sults showed.

Some firms, the sur­vey said, used the down­time to ramp up their on­line and so­cial me­dia pres­ence/mar­ket­ing, per­form main­te­nance on plants and ma­chin­ery and brain­storm on new prod­uct and ser­vice of­fer­ings.

“Some firms were able to repo­si­tion their ser­vices and/or prod­ucts to ei­ther make them ‘es­sen­tial’ or to mar­ket them to es­sen­tial busi­ness­es.

“For oth­ers, they es­sen­tial­ly dis­con­tin­ued their pre-pan­dem­ic core ac­tiv­i­ties and took up new ac­tiv­i­ties which are cur­rent­ly in high de­mand,” the sur­vey added.

For ex­am­ple, some busi­ness­es en­gaged in the pro­duc­tion and im­por­ta­tion of masks and oth­er per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment.

The sur­vey showed that oth­er mit­i­ga­tion strate­gies were most­ly aimed at sur­vival and in­clud­ed, ne­go­ti­at­ing with staff to take va­ca­tion, im­ple­ment­ing shift sys­tems and re­duc­ing wastage and in­ef­fi­cien­cies.

The arts, en­ter­tain­ment and recre­ation sec­tor, known as the cre­ative in­dus­try, has been heav­i­ly hit as many busi­ness­es ex­pe­ri­enced can­cel­la­tions in per­for­mances, sport­ing events and train­ings have been halt­ed, added to which work­ers have been laid off and com­pa­nies are strug­gling to sur­vive.

How­ev­er, the sur­vey showed some sub sec­tors such as fash­ion have adapt­ed to new emerg­ing de­mands for face mask but oth­ers have been out of op­er­a­tion since the ‘stay at home’ or­der was im­ple­ment­ed.

Al­most all sub sec­tors have re­sort­ed to so­cial me­dia plat­forms to ad­ver­tise and con­tin­ue pro­mot­ing their prod­ucts and ser­vices.

“Many lo­cal busi­ness­es have record­ed lit­tle to no rev­enue dur­ing the COVID-19 lock­down.

“Due to the na­ture of their op­er­a­tions, their on­ly op­tion has been cut­backs in spend­ing and lay­ing off staff. For oth­ers, keep­ing cus­tomers en­gaged through so­cial me­dia plat­forms is their on­ly means of op­er­at­ing dur­ing the pan­dem­ic,” the sur­vey not­ed.

Re­spon­dents were al­so asked if their em­ploy­ees ac­cessed Gov­ern­ment re­lief grants.

At the close of the sur­vey on April 24, 34 per cent of re­spon­dents in­di­cat­ed their em­ploy­ees had in­deed ac­cessed gov­ern­ment grants.

For­eign ex­change short­ages were ex­ac­er­bat­ed be­cause of the COVID-19 cri­sis, the sur­vey showed as sev­er­al busi­ness­es in­di­cat­ed that their most ur­gent fi­nanc­ing needs for re­cov­ery re­lat­ed to the avail­abil­i­ty of US cur­ren­cy.

The sur­vey in­clud­ed 26 ques­tions and was ex­e­cut­ed from April 20 to April 24, 2020. A to­tal of 394 busi­ness­es across the coun­try took part.

On March 31, the Gov­ern­ment im­posed a stay-at-home or­der for non-es­sen­tial ser­vices. This or­der has been in ef­fect for over one month and will con­tin­ue un­til May 10, 2020.