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- Four in ten businesses feel that they cannot continue to operate:<\/strong> When asked about financial resources, 42,2% of respondents indicated that they are not confident that they have the financial resources to continue operating through the COVID-19 outbreak. When asked how long business can continue without turnover, 54,0% of respondents indicated that they can survive without turnover between one to three months.<\/li>\n
- Almost half of responding businesses have temporarily closed their doors:<\/strong> The industries reporting the highest percentages of temporary closure or paused trading activity were construction, manufacturing, trade and mining.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
![\"Covid19Pandemic\"](\"https:\/\/www.statssa.gov.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Covid19Pandemic-300x207.jpg\")
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- Half of the respondents expect that their workforce size would stay the same:<\/strong> Asked how their workforce size might change over the two weeks following the reference period, 50,4% of respondents expected no change, while 36,8% expected their workforce size to decline. Businesses indicated that they have implemented a range of measures to cope with the impact of the pandemic on their workforce, including decreasing working hours (28,3% of respondents) and laying off staff in the short term (19,6% of respondents). Only about one in four businesses indicated that they had not taken any measures yet.<\/li>\n
- Five in six businesses have experienced a drop in turnover:<\/strong> Asked whether turnover was within its normal range in the period 30 March\u201313 April 2020, 85,4% of respondents surveyed reported turnover below the normal range. Respondents in the construction, real estate and other business services, and transport industries were the most affected by lower than expected turnover.<\/li>\n
- Almost two-thirds of businesses feel that this will be worse than the 2008\/09 recession<\/strong>: Many businesses (65,0%) anticipate that the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic will substantially be worse than the 2008\/09 global financial crisis. Only 4,3% of respondents indicated that the impact will or could be the same.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Readers should keep the following in mind when interpreting the results from this survey: micro businesses (with an annual turnover below R2 million) were not included, answers to the survey questions reflect the perceptions of respondents, and the findings are based on limited responses.<\/p>\n
The strength of the data is that it provides a quick snapshot and valuable economic insight \u2013 in close to real time \u2013 into the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on South African businesses.<\/p>\n
If you missed the link in the article above, the complete report is available here.<\/a><\/p>\n
Similar articles are available on the Stats SA website and can be accessed here<\/a>.<\/p>\n
For a monthly overview of economic indicators and infographics, catch the latest edition of the Stats Biz<\/em> newsletter here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A rapid response survey, conducted by Stats SA during the lockdown, asked businesses how the current crisis is affecting their operations in the two-week period from 30 March to 13 April 2020. This is what they told us. A total of 707 businesses in the formal sector responded to the survey, outlining the pandemic\u2019s impact read more »<\/a><\/p>\n
<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-press-statements"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.statssa.gov.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.statssa.gov.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.statssa.gov.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.statssa.gov.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.statssa.gov.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13236"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.statssa.gov.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13236\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13243,"href":"https:\/\/www.statssa.gov.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13236\/revisions\/13243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.statssa.gov.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.statssa.gov.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.statssa.gov.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} - Five in six businesses have experienced a drop in turnover:<\/strong> Asked whether turnover was within its normal range in the period 30 March\u201313 April 2020, 85,4% of respondents surveyed reported turnover below the normal range. Respondents in the construction, real estate and other business services, and transport industries were the most affected by lower than expected turnover.<\/li>\n
- Almost half of responding businesses have temporarily closed their doors:<\/strong> The industries reporting the highest percentages of temporary closure or paused trading activity were construction, manufacturing, trade and mining.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n