The Fiji Chamber of Commerce and Industry says 2021 is going to be another hard year for business in the country.
Chamber president Dr Nur Bano Ali said the FCCI Business Roundtable — Working with COVID-19 discussions held yesterday would provide some clarity on the issues facing the formal sector.
“Business is down, it’s hard, it’s not easy,” she said.
“So what we want to do is kind of have a discussion for sharing of ideas, experiences, everybody had to downsize or remodel their business in some form or another.”
Dr Ali said this was a platform for everyone to learn from each other as they had people from the insurance industry and transport industry for example to share experiences and ideas.
“The issues that people have raised with us for instance, at the end of March, the repayment holidays are coming to an end.”
She said this would be an opportunity for the banks in the country and Reserve Bank of Fiji to address this process.
“We got the people here, and then maybe, through this, we hear the business problems as well and then we can kind of input some ideas from there into the budget as well.”
She said most businesses have had to restructure most of their loans. “Banks still want cash flow, banks still want your future plans but how do we plan in an uncertain environment.
“Last year was wasted, most businesses were down by more than 30 per cent with hardly any growth. “And in this year, if you have to project how do you project how far you will go,” said Dr Ali.
She said the vaccines arriving into the country gave people some hope however until the borders open there won’t be any changes.
“Even with the local tourism, what happened is it’s really not that impactful, but it gave some money in people’s pockets. “And people are still by and large in the tourism sector and everything.”
She added industries such as fuel and food were doing well especially the supermarkets. “Last year, our saving grace was the remittance.
While the formal sector like here we’re going to talk about these are existing businesses having to remodel reorganise has been down, the informal sector has been thriving because all the remittance that comes in goes to them.
“And then it’s been in the system, thank God for them because otherwise we’d be in a lot of downtime.”
