Business NEWS

Lockdown. Quarantine. Social Amelioration Fund, Retrenched. Government borrowings. Mass Testing. Contact Tracing. Vaccinations. Herd Immunity. Work from Home. And so on. Words or phrases that probably enlarge our vocabulary when this pandemic began.

Cooperatives, popularly known as coops, are both social and business organizations, organized for the purpose of putting up capital to undertake an agreed upon business that caters to the needs of the owners themselves. Coops in the agricultural sector, farm and fish businesses doing their own marketing activities, market-vendors , and even farming  in the urban setting will find the formation of  Service Coops helpful and necessary during this time of pandemic.  Canteen concessionaire operators, consumer goods marketing and distribution, car owners tricycle operators and even motorbike owners affiliated with delivery services, can organize the more popular  Credit Coops that can provide loans at very affordable and easy to pay terms. There are those who offer multiple services. They are called Multi-Purpose Cooperatives.

Re-start. re-charge, re-heat! The new hype of the country’s economic managers as they focus on the re- opening of most businesses to start reheating the economy.

During this pandemic, businesses try to be innovative and creative in marketing their products as consumers’ purchasing power starts to decline for a number of reasons – loss of jobs, stoppage of their streams of passive income from their investments and tightness in cash flow as their family income comes in trickle.

Among the big issues during this pandemic is the loss of family income, either due to loss of jobs / employment as a result of company closure or stoppage of the source of livelihood. To fill in the need of families for cash, LGUs have adopted distribution of amelioration funds, distribution of food / groceries, support to the seniors and in other cases, educational funds to students from low-income groups. Admittedly though, it does not solve the problem completely as LGU funds are also limited.

Since the imposition of community lockdowns in many areas of the country, many new business ideas have actually been introduced to cater to the continuing needs of the consuming public. In some cases, existing business ideas were innovated and promoted using social media.

The impact of COVID-19 on the world economy cannot be taken for granted. Everyone from the most developed countries to the third world see the downtrend of their GDP, labor unemployment , exports and almost nil foreign direct investments, while most Medium, small and micro-enterprises (MSMEs) will be tight in their cash flow.