Busi­ness lead­ers be­lieve that a sec­ond COVID-19 re­lat­ed lock­down could be "dis­as­trous" for T&T. Af­ter los­ing hun­dreds of mil­lions be­tween March to June, Jai Lelad­hars­ingh, co­or­di­na­tor, Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers (CR­BC), heads of busi­ness as­so­ci­a­tions and mem­bers are brac­ing for rough days ahead.

Jus­ti­fy­ing the hun­dreds of mil­lions in loss­es, he said, "We looked at busi­ness clo­sures in Ch­agua­nas, San Fer­nan­do, Point Lisas plants and oth­er ar­eas around the coun­try. We looked at con­trac­tors los­ing jobs be­cause of these clo­sures and they could not do con­struc­tion work or any type of work be­cause of COVID-19. Al­so, there was a se­vere de­cline in the restau­rant, fast food and re­tail busi­ness."

Econ­o­mist Dr Ronald Ramkissoon, who agreed the road ahead would be rough, said the sec­tor was go­ing through its worse cri­sis in decades.

"We are go­ing to con­tin­ue to see busi­ness clo­sures. We are go­ing to see the down­siz­ing of busi­ness­es. This is a ma­jor blow to busi­ness­es as we know it, es­pe­cial­ly in the re­tail sec­tor. It is ob­vi­ous on the streets, in restau­rants, stores and so on.”

Ramkissoon said to ex­pect an in­crease in un­em­ploy­ment as busi­ness­es are forced to close its doors.

On elec­tion night, when he an­nounced his vic­to­ry, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley told the coun­try to ex­pect dif­fi­cult days ahead.

"Our pro­jec­tions are that the next two years will be dif­fi­cult, very dif­fi­cult, but dur­ing that pe­ri­od we are re­quired to do cer­tain things that will put us in a bet­ter po­si­tion to en­joy the rest of that fu­ture which is guar­an­teed to us," he said.

With the re­cent spike in COVID-19 cas­es, the Prime Min­is­ter an­nounced new mea­sures that re­strict­ed bars and restau­rants to grab-and-go sales. Beach­es and rivers and church­es were closed. The bor­ders al­so re­main closed.

On March 12, T&T record­ed its first case of COVID-19 and just days af­ter, the Gov­ern­ment an­nounced the first set of re­stric­tions and then con­tin­ued with the clo­sure of restau­rants, bar, and re­duc­ing the open­ing hours for oth­er non-es­sen­tial busi­ness­es.

Busi­ness as­so­ci­a­tions have paint­ed a grim pic­ture of the sit­u­a­tion so far. Low­er sales, not enough mon­ey to pay land­lords, no mon­ey to pay bank loans, keep­ing work­ers while mak­ing loss­es have all con­tributed to the death of many small busi­ness­es.

Based on da­ta from the Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs, Lelad­hars­ingh said that there are 25,700 busi­ness­es in the coun­try. He has pro­ject­ed that based on his cal­cu­la­tions, ten to 15 per cent of busi­ness­es will be closed per­ma­nent­ly by ear­ly 2022.

He said that he had called for busi­ness­es to have their tax­es de­ferred to help them dur­ing this pe­ri­od but the sug­ges­tion was not tak­en se­ri­ous­ly by the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance.

"This ten per cent to 15 per cent fig­ure con­sists of very small en­ter­pris­es that de­pend on week­ly or dai­ly sales to sur­vive. Once they can­not make those sales their whole cash flow dries up and they have no cap­i­tal to restart."

Lelad­hars­ingh said any fur­ther COVID-19 re­stric­tions should be dis­cussed with the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty be­fore im­ple­men­ta­tion.

SME loans 'too pro­hib­i­tive to ac­cess'

He re­ferred to the $300 mil­lion Gov­ern­ment-backed SME loan fa­cil­i­ty that came in­to ef­fect in June and said the terms and con­di­tions are "too pro­hib­i­tive" for busi­ness­es to ac­cess.

As far as he knows, busi­ness own­ers have ap­plied but he has not got­ten feed­back if any of these ap­pli­cants have been suc­cess­ful.

Speak­ing in Par­lia­ment in June, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said that they would tar­get SMEs with an­nu­al turnovers of $1 to $20 mil­lion.

Lelad­hars­ingh rec­om­mend­ed that the Gov­ern­ment es­tab­lish a grant to help small busi­ness­es pay wages for a short pe­ri­od un­til they can re-es­tab­lish their op­er­a­tions.

"The SME sec­tor em­ploys 60 per cent of the peo­ple in the work­force and if they make rev­enue and they have breath­ing space, they could then hire two to three more em­ploy­ees and peo­ple who are on the street could get back in­to the world of work."

He be­lieves the on­ly way for­ward is for the pri­vate sec­tor and the Gov­ern­ment to come up with a plan to open new eco­nom­ic sec­tors.

Sales at some busi­ness­es drop by 50 per cent

Reval Chat­ter­goon, pres­i­dent, Ari­ma Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion (ABA) told the Sun­day Guardian that all re­stric­tions for COVID-19 will af­fect busi­ness­es in­clud­ing this sec­ond wave of re­stric­tions.

"So over this past week, some busi­ness­es have de­creased by 50 per cent to 60 per cent in their nor­mal day of sales. It seems that the con­sumer does not have the con­fi­dence to shop."

He es­ti­mat­ed that 60 busi­ness­es have closed their doors per­ma­nent­ly over the last few months. The Ari­ma Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion cov­ers ar­eas be­tween Arou­ca and Va­len­cia.

He blamed these clo­sures on over­head costs like rent and bank loans be­ing too high and busi­ness own­ers hav­ing to ab­sorb these costs.

"If your rent is $5,000 but your to­tal in­come is $3,000 then you can­not pay labour... With these new COVID-19 cas­es it will im­pact even greater."

Bartlett: Peo­ple don’t have spend­ing pow­er

Daphne Bartlett, pres­i­dent, San Fer­nan­do Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion said that in­evitably more busi­ness­es will close if more re­stric­tions are im­ple­ment­ed.

For the Ju­ly/Au­gust back-to school-sales, she said the busi­ness­es in San Fer­nan­do have re­port­ed a 50 per cent de­cline. Gas sta­tions in that area al­so re­port­ed hav­ing just a few cus­tomers af­ter 6 pm.

She has cal­cu­lat­ed that 100 busi­ness­es have been closed in the city of San Fer­nan­do over the last few months.

If the sur­round­ing ar­eas of San Fer­nan­do like Vista­bel­la, Mara­bel­la, and La Ro­maine are in­clud­ed, she said that this fig­ure goes up to around 500 busi­ness­es that have been closed.

"We have not seen any in­crease in sales af­ter busi­ness­es were al­lowed to re­open. Peo­ple don’t have spend­ing pow­er. A lot of the small­er busi­ness­es are closed like nail techs, cloth­ing stores, hair­dressers and oth­er sim­i­lar busi­ness­es. In ad­di­tion, those busi­ness­es that are still opened have cut staff. These re­tail out­lets have few­er cus­tomers but they still have fixed costs."

24 busi­ness­es closed in San Juan

Vivek Char­ran, pres­i­dent, San Juan Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion has es­ti­mat­ed that al­most two dozen busi­ness­es in his area have closed over the last few months.

10 busi­ness­es in Tu­na­puna shut their doors

Melis­sa Sen­house, pres­i­dent, Greater Tu­na­puna Cham­ber of In­dus­try & Com­merce has es­ti­mat­ed that al­most ten busi­ness­es in that area have closed per­ma­nent­ly over the last few months.

Econ­o­mist: Govt needs plan to boost econ­o­my, busi­ness­es must find new ways to sur­vive

Com­ment­ing fur­ther, Ramkissoon warned that the eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion will get worse be­fore it gets bet­ter.

"We are go­ing to have the worst record-break­ing trends in the busi­ness and eco­nom­ic world since the 1980s in terms of the macro­eco­nom­ic da­ta."

He rec­om­mend­ed that the new Gov­ern­ment come up with a plan to boost the econ­o­my in the short and medi­um terms.

He al­so en­cour­aged busi­ness­es to come up with new ways to sur­vive in this new world of COVID-19.

"They need to iden­ti­fy ar­eas in which growth is pos­si­ble. We need to think of new struc­tures of the econ­o­my and busi­ness­es."

CRED­IT UNIONS' $200M FA­CIL­I­TY

The Min­istry of Fi­nance had an­nounced a $200 mil­lion loan fa­cil­i­ty for cred­it unions in May.

This was meant to as­sist or­di­nary mem­bers and small busi­ness own­ers.

The Cen­tral Fi­nance Fa­cil­i­ty (CFF) stat­ed that all cred­it unions can take part, but 12 cred­it unions are par­tic­i­pat­ing via the CFF and these in­clude Com­mu­ni­ty Care Cred­it Union, PSCU Cred­it Union, Pen­te­costal Cred­it Union, VEN­TURE Cred­it Union, Run­nemede Cred­it Union and Ma­son Hall Cred­it Union.

Ac­cord­ing to an up­date from the CFF yes­ter­day, on­ly sev­en loans have been grant­ed so far.

The rea­sons they gave for the low par­tic­i­pa­tion rate in­clude:

•In­ter­est­ed mem­bers as­sumed the fa­cil­i­ty was a grant and not a loan

•Mem­bers did not qual­i­fy be­cause they did not ex­pe­ri­ence a re­duc­tion or loss of in­come or earn­ings

•Mem­bers were un­able to pro­vide sup­port­ing doc­u­ments/ev­i­dence for the loan/ev­i­dence of loss of in­come

•Some cred­it unions were of­fer­ing sim­i­lar "pan­dem­ic" loans or waivers/mora­to­ri­um to their mem­bers since the on­set of the COVID-19 reg­u­la­tions, there­fore the mem­bers saw no need to ap­ply for the fa­cil­i­ty

•Mem­bers were hes­i­tant to add ex­tra debt by tak­ing the pan­dem­ic loan even though pay­ments are de­ferred

•Lack of in­ter­est may be at­trib­uted to the late start of the ini­tia­tive since mem­bers may have re­turned to nor­mal­cy.