Business

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 ...