Places like bars, cin­e­mas and gyms have on­ly just re­opened their doors but, with COVID-19 cas­es on the rise so too is the anx­i­ety among busi­ness­es.

Sev­er­al busi­ness groups are wor­ried the Gov­ern­ment may re­sort to an­oth­er lock­down to curb the spread of the dis­ease.

Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, Gabriel Faria, said there is dis­qui­et among mem­bers who have been ask­ing whether they will have to close their doors again. Faria told Guardian Me­dia even with the lift­ing of re­stric­tions con­sumers have been cau­tious­ly spend­ing on­ly on es­sen­tial items.

“There is a sense of un­known as in what are the Gov­ern­ment’s plans. What we are see­ing is re­duced con­sumer ac­tiv­i­ty be­cause of the con­cern of the un­known due to the in­crease cas­es in COVID. Con­sumers are say­ing ‘let me save up in the event we have to go in­to an­oth­er lock­down,’” Faria lament­ed.

He added, “I could tell you that many of them (busi­ness­es) did not sur­vive the last one. What we are see­ing right now is that most busi­ness­es have gone in­to hi­ber­na­tion. Many busi­ness­es have giv­en up their busi­ness­es and they are now work­ing from home; they have staff work­ing on some sort of ro­ta­tion be­cause they can’t af­ford to pay them.”

De­spite the Christ­mas sea­son be­ing around the cor­ner, Pres­i­dent of the Ari­ma Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion, Chris­t­ian Ram­per­sad, said con­sumers usu­al­ly be­gin shop­ping around this time, how­ev­er, this has not been hap­pen­ing. In fact, he de­scribed it as, “the slow­est pe­ri­od for them in over a decade”.

Ac­cord­ing to him, “The ma­jor­i­ty of the econ­o­my has re­opened how­ev­er; most con­sumers have been out of jobs for quite some time and some have worked for re­duced in­come in many cas­es so their spend­ing pow­er is sig­nif­i­cant­ly less and the costs of con­sum­ables are high­er.”

“I think that (lock­down) is some­thing the en­tire coun­try is wary and ter­ri­fied about, be­cause the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty and I don’t think the econ­o­my could han­dle an­oth­er lock­down of any mag­ni­tude. The pre­vi­ous lock­downs did not ap­pear to have worked even with the cas­es,” Ram­per­sad not­ed.

Di­vali has shined a light on busi­ness­es in cen­tral Trinidad. Ac­cord­ing to Pres­i­dent of the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber, Richie Sookhai, con­sumer ac­tiv­i­ties were high­er than ex­pect­ed, as such, he is an­tic­i­pat­ing a fair­ly safe Christ­mas pe­ri­od es­pe­cial­ly with the State of Emer­gency ex­pir­ing at the end of the month.

But he ad­mit­ted there is still un­ease in the pub­lic do­main about pol­i­cy de­ci­sions in the near fu­ture.

“Gov­ern­ment should ide­al­ly start look­ing at the ex­am­ples in oth­er coun­tries so this idea of lock­ing down every time there is a spike in cas­es or it is get­ting out of hand is a sce­nario, they should start re­think­ing and stop re­strict­ing the eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty,” Sookhai sug­gest­ed.

The busi­ness groups be­lieve an ex­pan­sion of the TT Safe Zone ini­tia­tive, start­ing with the pub­lic ser­vices sec­tor, will en­cour­age more peo­ple to get vac­ci­nat­ed.