{"id":429192,"date":"2020-08-28T14:11:22","date_gmt":"2020-08-28T12:11:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=429192"},"modified":"2020-08-28T14:11:22","modified_gmt":"2020-08-28T12:11:22","slug":"warning-from-south-african-businesses-more-retrenchments-on-the-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/429192\/warning-from-south-african-businesses-more-retrenchments-on-the-way\/","title":{"rendered":"Warning from South African businesses: more retrenchments on the way"},"content":{"rendered":"

More than half of businesses in South Africa continue to operate under reduced capacity, with many still temporarily closed as the economy struggles to shake off the impact of Covid-19, and the resulting lockdown.<\/p>\n

These were among the finding in a survey conducted by management consultants Redflank, published on Thursday (27 August) for BeyondCOVID. The survey attracted approximately 1,800 responses between 7 June and 22 August 2020.<\/p>\n

Worryingly, respondents said on average they plan to retrench another 11% of their staff in the next six months. This is in line with current estimates<\/a> that about 1.5 million South Africans could lose their jobs.<\/p>\n

Nearly half (43%) of respondents said that their companies have made retrenchments, with the biggest cuts coming from small and micro-businesses, and medium-sized businesses. Most of the retrenchments happened in the food\/accommodation sector (68%), other services such as hairdressers (62%), and entertainment\/recreation (57%).<\/p>\n

Half of respondents operated in small to micro businesses, 16% in medium sized businesses, and 15% in large businesses. 11% worked in NGOs.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Revenue dropped by 76% on average for respondents across all sectors. Small to micro-businesses bore the brunt with an 84% loss in revenue and large businesses the least with 64%. The worst impacted sectors were accommodation\/food, construction, and entertainment\/recreation.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Over one in four (26%) businesses said they will need six months of funding over the next year, to survive.<\/p>\n

National Economic Development and Labour Council (Nedlac)<\/span> executive director Lisa Seftel said that help and funding is available, but businesses need to \u201chustle\u201d.<\/p>\n

Seftel said that businesses want more grant funding, not more debt in the form of loans, evidenced by the little uptake seen in government loan schemes.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople don\u2019t want loans. They actually need grants. I think if there was this ability for there to be grant funding and not loan funding, it would make a significant difference on the sustainability of companies, particularly small companies,\u201d Seftel said.<\/p>\n

According to Redflank director, Lings Naidoo, respondents said they would need more than four\u00a0 years to recover from the current devastation.<\/p>\n

\n

Read: Call to go out and support local businesses<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

More than half of businesses in South Africa continue to operate under reduced capacity, with many still temporarily closed as the economy struggles to shake off the impact of Covid-19, and the resulting lockdown.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":390203,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872],"tags":[26,15250],"class_list":["post-429192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-headline","tag-redflank"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=429192"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429192\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":429340,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429192\/revisions\/429340"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/390203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=429192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=429192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=429192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}