FCEF President Sandeep Chauhan

A recent survey by the Fiji Commerce & Employers Federation has indicated that 40% of its members are on partial operations and risk closing.

FCEF President Sandeep Chauhan says a lot of businesses have suffered throughout the world and Fiji is no exception.

Chauhan says many local businesses are not operating at a hundred percent since the pandemic hit adding that a lot of business houses are struggling to remain open.

“We’re expecting about 40% of the businesses have had some sort of disruption to their business. Either some have closed down, some have partially closed or scaled back hours. If you go around the country you’ll see different scenarios or from one township to another so if you look at Nadi which is kind of operating at very little on a very minimal scale but on the other hand when you look at towns like Ba or even cities like Suva they’re scaling. They’re still operating but perhaps not at 100%.”

The Federation says it has also made its submissions for the 2020/2021 National Budget.

“Our submissions have been around helping to keep money within the businesses so if we can come up with incentives that will mean that businesses can keep operating with having the cash in the business – then they can keep people employed abit longer then what they would have otherwise. Because they will need money, so gone are the days where you could look at a balance sheet and say we’ve got a very healthy business but that doesn’t necessarily equate to cash.”

The FCEF yesterday signed an MOU with Fiji Trades Union Congress to implement a Transition to Business project which aims to assist redundant workers venturing into self-employment.