Ky­ron Reg­is

ky­ron.reg­is@guardian.co.tt

A large sec­tion of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty has ac­knowl­edged that the fi­nan­cial im­pact of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic will be more sig­nif­i­cant than the neg­a­tive med­ical im­pact of the out­break it­self.

The busi­ness lead­ers’ con­cerns were de­tailed in a Busi­ness Out­look Study con­duct­ed by Mar­ket Facts and Opin­ions along­side the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce. The find­ings in­di­cate that busi­ness lead­ers “are wor­ried that it is pos­si­ble that the po­ten­tial eco­nom­ic con­se­quences (of COVID-19) may be more dam­ag­ing than the phys­i­cal toll ex­act­ed.”

“Most re­spon­dents (9 in 10) be­lieve that the eco­nom­ic im­pact will be greater than the out­break it­self, that things are go­ing to get worse be­fore they get bet­ter and that job se­cu­ri­ty is un­cer­tain,” the find­ings said.

A sim­i­lar pro­por­tion of the com­mu­ni­ty al­so ac­knowl­edged the se­ri­ous­ness of the pan­dem­ic.

The study said the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty is very aware of the dan­gers that loom large due to the virus and be­lieves this is a mat­ter weight­i­er than the fate of each in­di­vid­ual busi­ness.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­port, they per­ceive the ma­jor chal­lenge to be that of the sur­vival of the over­all econ­o­my and that the times ahead are filled with un­cer­tain­ty.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the busi­ness lead­ers are con­cerned about whether the gen­er­al pub­lic will be com­pli­ant with the pro­to­cols in­tro­duced to lim­it the ef­fects of the spread of the virus. Ac­cord­ing­ly, the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty is of the view that if the pop­u­la­tion is com­pli­ant, the coun­try may be able to go back to work soon­er than lat­er.

The study ex­plained that it is im­per­a­tive that these busi­ness lead­ers do not, by their ac­tions, sep­a­rate them­selves from the sac­ri­fice need­ed to go through the pain that awaits.

It not­ed: “Nav­i­gat­ing the un­cer­tain shoals re­quires the con­vic­tion that should all the par­ties work to­geth­er, the pain would be short­ened.”

The busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty ar­gued that this con­vic­tion will de­ter­mine to a large mea­sure the at­ti­tude and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty of the work­ers on the oth­er side of the ‘curve’.

The study not­ed that short-term think­ing, in at­tempt­ing to man­age the eco­nom­ic risks, may cre­ate long-term neg­a­tive ef­fects. It said there is no ob­vi­ous play-book and that busi­ness lead­ers will need to cre­ate their own.

With the ar­rival of COVID-19 to T&T, busi­ness­es have re­port­ed that there have been three ma­jor chal­lenges to be faced: main­tain­ing fi­nan­cial sus­tain­abil­i­ty, ad­dress­ing staff’s fears and con­cerns and ad­just­ing busi­ness op­er­a­tions.

How­ev­er, most par­tic­i­pants in the sur­vey are of the view that their em­ploy­ees are pro­duc­tive. The study said at least a third of the par­tic­i­pat­ing busi­ness­es in­di­cat­ed they have a com­mit­ted work­force and that they can adopt re­mote work. It not­ed that more than half of the busi­ness­es which hold this view are with­in the fi­nance, re­tail, man­u­fac­tur­ing and con­struc­tion in­dus­tries, or are more like­ly to be cat­e­gorised as those who have “es­sen­tial work­ers”.

There was al­so a high lev­el of sat­is­fac­tion ex­pressed with the Gov­ern­ment’s per­for­mance in han­dling the pan­dem­ic. Ac­cord­ing to 9 in 10 of the par­tic­i­pants, the Gov­ern­ment’s job has made them ei­ther ‘very sat­is­fied’ or ‘sat­is­fied’.

Nonethe­less, while sat­is­fac­tion in the Gov­ern­ment’s per­for­mance is high, the study in­di­cat­ed that there is an ap­pre­hen­sion about the Gov­ern­ment’s abil­i­ty to con­tain the spread of COVID-19. This is re­flec­tive of the strong view that col­lec­tive and per­son­al so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty - by means of the na­tion­al ef­fort to stay at home - af­fects the suc­cess of the Gov­ern­ment.