If the first lockdown of early 2020 left businesses gasping for air, the second one of June 2021 simply suffocated them to death. A new report published by weekly newspaper, The Observer, indicates that not all is well downtown as more traders continue to close shops and stay at home due to poor business fortunes.
In a conversation with a trader identified as Edward Muyanja, the last 12months of business downtown have been excruciating. From his point of view, business fortunes from pre-covid times and after Covid have been worlds apart.
He attributes the ill fortune due to the long period for which businesses were closed. Many of the people who could not stomach the financial lows brought up by accumulating rent arrears and the pause on business chose to vacate their work spaces.
Muyanja is not alone in this ordeal as many other traders share his plight while sighting a drastic fall in sales, spikes in loan defaults and clients who no longer have as much purchasing power as before the lockdown.
In an analogy, Muyanja cites that if the first lockdown of early 2020 left businesses gasping for air, the second one of June 2021 simply suffocated them to death.
Besides the side effects of the nation-wide lockdown, business morale is as well reported to have declined drastically as customer numbers and long periods of inactivity are contributing factors.
The bigger economic picture is equivalently unpleasant as a result of Covid-19.
The paper reports that tourism receipts, which are one of the country’s foreign exchange earners, have reduced, credit to the private sector is not growing as much as it should and the closure of schools has wounded the education sector, one of the biggest consumers in the economy.
Ramathan Ggoobi, the Permanent secretary in the ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Planning, said the Government will embark on a massive vaccination drive ahead of fully opening the economy.
As part of measures, Ggoobi said the government will “pursue a growth with-jobs-strategy” in the areas of agro-industrialization, tourism, manufacturing, oil and gas and ICT.
However, the trade and consumer market are still expected to struggle for the next couple of months as the wreckage from all the different lockdown measures continue to pile up.