Nearly all businesses in Nadi have seen a 70 to 90 percent drop in business due to COVID-19 while some have temporarily closed in the hope that the situation will improve quickly for them to resume.
Restaurants operating for takeaway are only doing around 10 to 20% of sales per day while business in the tourism sector is down by 90 percent.
According to the Nadi Chamber of Commerce COVID-19 Business Impact Survey, there has been a huge drop in sales figures which is directly impacting the livelihood of the employees as well.
Most have requested for financial support and grants from the government to keep their workers employed.
The report has also highlighted that businesses feel the COVID-19 outbreak is not being contained effectively and a good number of respondents have called for a total lockdown of up to three weeks.
According to the report, businesses are finding it difficult to meet its daily operations which means the impact is of grave concern and it will take a long time for most of them to recover.
All businesses have also agreed with no jab no job policy and have called for rental charges to be heavily discounted until international borders re-open.
Some other measures requested by businesses in Nadi include relaxation by banks on loan repayments, loan restructuring and reduction on loan rates, interest on loans to be frozen, EFL to consider special rates on charges, and Fiji Revenue and Customs Service to relax tax payments on a case by case basis.
Minister for Economy, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum will deliver the 2021/2022 National Budget address at 7.30pm next Friday.
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