Business

Most Cape Town businesses have proved resilient during the Covid-19 lockdown, but the strain of lockdown made 12% contemplate leaving the country. Astonishingly, four per cent claimed to be thriving.

These are among the findings of the Chamber’s survey of its members carried out this past week.

A recent survey by the Cape Chamber of Industry & Commerce of the experiences of small and micro businesses when approaching Government for relief paints a chaotic picture of the UIF-Temporary aid (UIF/TERS) insurance schemes to which businesses and workers have been contributing for years.

The survey’s findings represent a wide cross-section of opinion from more than 55 different business types ...

Citizens of Cape Town can now congratulate themselves for having the best of all possible municipal administrations – that is, if they merely read the splendid official media releases on the subject, one of which was devoted almost entirely to singing its praises.

However, a detailed study of this post-Covid-19 budget by the City from a commercial and industrial perspective, reveals a less happy ...

The Cape Chamber of Commerce and Industry this week begins its 217th year of operation from its base in the Mother City.

It took barely two generations after the establishment a garden for fresh vegetables for trade and enterprise to flourish at the Cape.

Any lifting of constraints imposed on our freedom of movement is a relief, but what has changed in Level-4 has done little to ease the crushing burden under which the private sector is suffering, especially those thousands of small and micro-enterprises that play such a crucial role in the lives of large sections of our population.

For them, the restrictions offer a stark choice – obey them and ...

It is odd that Level 4 restrictions keep the ban on e-commerce. Even more strange is the reported reason:  that selling on the internet would be unfair competition for spaza shops and other micro-businesses.

Isn’t ordering goods to be delivered to your home, only different in degree from collecting your daily bread from the bakery yourself?

The private sector’s experience of Level 5 Covid-19 lockdown regulations has had a dramatic and negative impact, abruptly confining owners, managers, administrators and workers to their homes. After five weeks of lockdown, it is obvious that the small business sector has taken the biggest hit.

These are testing times for chief executives around the world. With growing numbers of women CEOs, how they deal with the Covid-19 pandemic’s impact on their companies could be revealing.

For some answers, we point to a recent global survey of women chief executives (CEOs) carried out by the Chamber’s IWEC Programme, that sought to find out how they were handling the crisis in their companies.

In wartime, there are inevitable mistakes – over reactions by officials, excessive use of police force, the proliferation of regulations, and a burgeoning army of officials who draw up new laws to be obeyed for the greater good - all intended to help win the war, and all regarded as therefore unchallengeable.

With small businesses already hit hard by the impact of COVID-19, and especially the imposition of a national lockdown, it is time municipalities and landlords granted property owners and tenants some breathing space by suspending payments for the duration of the lockdown.

This statement is made in light of the negative economic consequences of the national lockdown and the decision by the ...