The Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Employers Association, Mr Alex Frimpong says it will take a while for businesses in the country to recover from the shocks they are currently facing due to coronavirus pandemic.
However, he said he envisage a situation where things will normalize and businesses will improve within three years or more after the pandemic was over.
“I’m not sure any pandemic has really shaken the world and by extension its economies like we are witnessing now To the extent that for about a month or two now there has been no movement in any part of the world”, he said.
Speaking on the ‘Upfront’ programme on the Joy News channel, on 29th of April, which was monitored by the Ghana Talks Business, Mr Frimpong said “some snap discussions that we have had with many of the businesses point to a picture that is not rosy for them in terms of revenue losses and how they are surviving”.
“The challenge now is how to contain the pandemic. Once the containment has shown very positive results to the extent that confidence in the economy will be begin to bounce back, I am sure businesses will be in a position to ensure they sustain jobs and the businesses”, he said
Thus Mr Frimpong expressed the optimism that businesses will recover once the pandemic is over, albeit not in the shortest possible time.
“I’m sure once this is over, businesses should be able bounce back, maybe in the medium to long term, fine, but in the shortest possible time, it will be quite difficult”, he opined.
Until then, he said, if businesses are able to recover within a year or two then it means they might have done something exceptionally well because “it is really difficult”.
Furthermore, Mr Frimpong stressed that these are difficult times for businesses. A number of them are struggling to survive, adding that any recovery plan hatched by business owners in the country will be contingent on how soon the virus is brought under control.
In spite of the difficulties, he said, the options under consideration by business owners in the board rooms for survival, do not include industrial layoff. He explained that staff lay offs is the last thing on the minds of employers because of the scarcity of skilled labour in the country.
‘The fate of employees is linked with the survival of the business and I can assure you that in my conversations with many businesses, the last thing they would want to do is to layoff employees.
The need for to keep businesses running in order to prevent layoffs, the Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Employers Association says, is the reason why stimulus packages are important to keep them afloat at least until the pandemic is over.
