Joel Julien

joel.julien@guardian.co.tt

While fur­ther re­stric­tions were be­ing im­posed on busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty in T&T yes­ter­day to curb the spread of COVID-19, sev­er­al Eu­ro­pean coun­tries lift­ed their own mea­sures in an at­tempt to restart eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty.

Ger­many, Den­mark, Nor­way, and the Czech Re­pub­lic all re­moved var­i­ous re­stric­tions yes­ter­day in an at­tempt to bal­ance pub­lic health with eco­nom­ic re­vival.

Among the first busi­ness­es al­lowed to re­open in Ger­many yes­ter­day were book­stores, car deal­er­ships, and bike stores.

Ger­mans still have to ex­er­cise so­cial dis­tanc­ing by re­main­ing at least five feet away from each oth­er in these busi­ness­es.

Ac­cord­ing to of­fi­cial fig­ures Ger­many record­ed 1,775 new cas­es for the past day, while the num­ber of deaths linked to COVID-19 rose by 110 to 4,404.

A study pub­lished April 6 in the med­ical jour­nal The Lancet and a sep­a­rate pa­per by the Or­ga­ni­za­tion for Eco­nom­ic Co­op­er­a­tion and De­vel­op­ment — sug­gest that school clo­sures are less im­por­tant than work­place clo­sures in stem­ming the spread of the nov­el coro­n­avirus.

Den­mark and Nor­way have re­opened schools.

In T&T non-es­sen­tial ser­vices have been closed since March 30.

Denise James, how­ev­er, is hop­ing that these busi­ness­es would not have to wait much longer be­fore they can re­open.

Stay at home or­ders in T&T are so far ex­pect­ed to re­main in ef­fect un­til April 30 as part of T&T’s fight to stop the spread of COVID-19 and save lives.

Since then James has lost her job and has not been paid.

To make mat­ters worse she has found out that her com­pa­ny has not been pay­ing Na­tion­al In­sur­ance so she can­not ac­cess the $1,500 Salary Re­lief Grant be­ing of­fered by the gov­ern­ment.

She has vis­it­ed the So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­istry to see if she can get ac­cess to the In­come Sup­port Grant be­ing of­fered there but so far has been un­suc­cess­ful.

“I am frus­trat­ed. I’m un­der reel pres­sure and I feel like every­thing is go­ing wrong,” James said.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar yes­ter­day called on the gov­ern­ment to spare a thought for this coun­try’s poor and suf­fer­ing.

“Think about the poor in our so­ci­ety, they are suf­fer­ing, their lives mat­ter too! Many are hav­ing great dif­fi­cul­ty in pro­vid­ing for them­selves and their loved ones,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar stat­ed.

“De­ci­sions on the re­open­ing of busi­ness­es and the wider econ­o­my must be put for­ward. I agree we can­not be reck­less with cit­i­zens’ phys­i­cal and men­tal health, but the coun­try must know what the short and medi­um-term plans of the gov­ern­ment are. The on­ly per­sons rea­son­ably com­fort­able in the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion are per­sons who can still col­lect their salaries. What about those who had noth­ing to eat this morn­ing,” she stat­ed.

Busi­ness­man Pe­ter George said the gov­ern­ment “must act with sig­nif­i­cant­ly more speed, vigour, and in­no­v­a­tive­ness to ad­dress T&T loom­ing eco­nom­ic cri­sis”.

“Gov­ern­ment seems on the face to be tak­ing a mea­sured ap­proach, con­sis­tent with a con­ven­tion­al eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion as op­posed to the ef­forts seen with most of our in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners! This is a treach­er­ous path fraught with per­il as time is not an al­ly here,” he stat­ed.

George said many busi­ness­es may fold or suf­fer sig­nif­i­cant­ly con­tract­ed op­er­a­tions and there­fore called on the gov­ern­ment to be pre­pared to in­ject am­ple liq­uid­i­ty to en­sure eco­nom­ic con­ti­nu­ity.

“Cit­i­zens and busi­ness own­ers large and small must be as­sured, and quick­ly, that re­lief is forth­com­ing in or­der for them to have the con­fi­dence and com­fort to con­tin­ue ‘loss’ op­er­a­tions. We are not just fac­ing a short term shock from COVID-19, but we face the spec­tre of sig­nif­i­cant eco­nom­ic drag from an econ­o­my that was al­ready in sec­u­lar stag­na­tion, threat­en­ing to wipe out all progress made in re­cent years,” he said.

“We must do every­thing to keep the eco­nom­ic en­gine run­ning. Many busi­ness­es, if not re­as­sured of as­sis­tance, will sim­ply fold up their tents which will be cat­a­stroph­ic to the econ­o­my. The risk of do­ing too much is neg­li­gi­ble where­as the risk of do­ing too lit­tle is calami­tous,” he stat­ed.

Al­li­son Peart of Ja­maica speak­ing in a we­bi­nar host­ed by the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank said busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity is es­sen­tial at this time.

“How you re­act to any cri­sis whether it is a hur­ri­cane, or whether it is a pan­dem­ic your busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity is very, very im­por­tant,” she said.

The we­bi­nar was ti­tled “The Caribbean and Coro­n­avirus; Op­tions for Busi­ness.”

Vin­cent Van­der­pool-Wal­lace of the Bed­ford Bak­er Group said busi­ness­es would need to find op­por­tu­ni­ties in the face of the chal­lenges be­ing faced.

“Con­ven­tion­al wis­dom says that in or­der to get back to busi­ness, as usu­al, we need to find some kind of vac­cine so that we can make sure that the vis­i­tors and the ser­vice providers are go­ing to be able to comin­gle, well that is go­ing to take a very long pe­ri­od of time and if you be­gin­ning to look at the fi­nance of the coun­tries in the Caribbean there is no way in the world that we can wait un­til that pe­ri­od of time,” he said.

“The re­al prob­lem nowa­days is if we want to get back any busi­ness I think we have to piv­ot and we have to find a way that we are go­ing to be able to move very rapid­ly from pre­dict­ing rain to build­ing arks,” Van­der­pool-Wal­lace said.