Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

As the coun­try an­tic­i­pates an im­mi­nent lift­ing of re­stric­tions im­ple­ment­ed in the face of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants’ As­so­ci­a­tion (DO­MA) pres­i­dent Gre­go­ry Aboud is urg­ing all busi­ness­es to com­ply with what­ev­er pa­ra­me­ters are set out for them by Gov­ern­ment as the coun­try be­gins its eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery, de­spite any chal­lenges they may have faced dur­ing this time.

How­ev­er, he al­so fears what busi­ness­es may be faced with when that time ar­rives.

“The dri­ve of the Gov­ern­ment in the ear­ly stage pro­tect­ed our cit­i­zens and pro­tect­ed our coun­try and we may have sec­toral in­ter­ests who feel their needs were ig­nored and may have busi­ness in­ter­ests who feel they were asked to bear too much of the bur­den, but this can­not be aban­doned,” Aboud told Guardian Me­dia in a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day.

“At this stage, we can­not aban­don our oblig­a­tion to obey the au­thor­i­ties with re­spect to the open­ing sched­ule that is planned and it is in­cum­bent up­on all busi­ness­es to set an ex­am­ple to the wider so­ci­ety.”

He an­tic­i­pates the Prime Min­is­ter will set out these guide­lines to the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty on Sun­day. Asked if busi­ness­es un­der the as­so­ci­a­tion would be able to re­open im­me­di­ate­ly if that hap­pens, Aboud said: “I be­lieve a ma­jor­i­ty of the busi­ness­es are in a po­si­tion to open.”

Vis­it­ing down­town yes­ter­day, Guardian Me­dia ob­served many stores com­ply­ing with the or­der to re­main closed dur­ing the Stay-at-Home mea­sures.

The own­er of Ink’t, Tim­o­thy Mar, was seen ex­it­ing Town Cen­tre Mall on Fred­er­ick Street with items from his store. Asked if he was prepar­ing to re­open in an­tic­i­pa­tion of an eas­ing of re­stric­tions, he said his op­er­a­tions would on­ly take one day to get up and run­ning so he was await­ing the an­nounce­ment.

Gabriel Ma­habir, own­er of a bmo­bile out­let along In­de­pen­dence Square, was spot­ted car­ry­ing gyp­sum tiles in­to his store. He told Guardian Me­dia he was us­ing the time to clean and per­form mi­nor re­pairs on the shop. He al­so said he in­tend­ed to add a sink for cus­tomers to prac­tice prop­er hy­giene.

An elec­tron­ics store was spot­ted op­er­at­ing along Char­lotte Street.

As store own­ers an­tic­i­pate the re­open­ing of their busi­ness­es, Aboud not­ed there are con­cerns by some own­ers about ex­pens­es which ac­cu­mu­lat­ed over the pe­ri­od they were closed.

“We are an­tic­i­pat­ing there is go­ing to be dif­fi­cul­ties based on the fixed cost of fixed over­heads, which in­clude rent, which in­clude T&TEC’s re­serve ca­pac­i­ty charges, which in­clude bank in­ter­est, which in this case might be high­er than if they had been mak­ing their month­ly pay­ments of prin­ci­ple,” Aboud said.

This, he ex­plained, would ad­verse­ly af­fect mar­gin­al busi­ness­es that do not have the nec­es­sary cash flow or cap­i­tal to cope with these costs. He was un­able to give an ex­act quan­ti­ty of busi­ness­es with­in the as­so­ci­a­tion which may be in the “mar­gin­al” cat­e­go­ry. How­ev­er, he float­ed the fig­ure of about ten to 15 per cent of his mem­bers.