Greater Manchester Chamber has released the results of its first Business Monitor survey, which tracks the impact of Coronavirus on businesses.
The survey was conducted between Friday 20 March and Thursday 26 March and captured the views of over 100 businesses.
The results show that the short-term outlook is significantly negative and is likely to worsen as business leaders grasp the full extent of disruption to normal trading and their supply chains.
Data from the Business Monitor shows demand hitting record lows wiping out any gains seen since the start of the year and highlighted in the Chamber’s Quarterly Economic Survey.
Cashflow
With falling demand and potential delays in payments being received, many businesses have been faced with reduced cash positions.
The balance of firms reporting cash flow problems is -88 meaning a lot more businesses reported difficulties in maintaining cash flow positions and in fact, none of the respondents to the tracker reported an improvement in cash flow positions in the last few days. Anecdotal evidence indicates that this is a critical challenge for many businesses and indeed a lot of the support measures the government has initiated have been to help businesses with cashflow problems.
Business confidence
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Overall, the results strike a stark picture and reveal how the outbreak of Covid-19 and the substantial public health response have led to significant distress for many businesses.
Any upturn that the 海角视频 economy received from the decisive election victory that the Conservatives won in December 2019 has been rapidly lost and the results of the Greater Manchester Business Monitor shows that many businesses are still grappling with the shock and abrupt decline in business activity levels. With a prolonged lockdown possible, there could be further damage to the national and regional economy. As a result, business confidence is low and the majority of business leaders are either not so confident or not all confident about prospects in the short term.
Support measures
Starting with his Budget on March 11, the chancellor Rishi Sunak has announced a suite of support measures to help businesses facing difficulties. These have included interest free loans, salary subsidies for furloughed staff, one-off grants and business rates relief.
While the majority of survey respondents are aware of the schemes, there is still some lack of understanding about how these schemes will work in practice and how businesses can access the support they need. In the coming weeks, the tracker will look into both awareness and adoption of these support measures.
The Chamber’s website has a Covid-19 section, where there is a summary of the different schemes, links to relevant pages and support available for businesses.
Subrahmaniam Krishnan-Harihara, Head of Research at Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce, said: “Overall, the results strike a stark picture and reveal how the outbreak of Covid-19 and the substantial public health response have led to significant distress for many businesses.
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“Any upturn that the 海角视频 economy received from the decisive election victory that the Conservatives won in December 2019 has been rapidly lost and the results of the Greater Manchester Business Monitor shows that many businesses are still grappling with the shock and abrupt decline in business activity levels.
“With a prolonged lockdown possible, there could be further damage to the national and regional economy.
“As a result, business confidence is low and the majority of business leaders are either not so confident or not all confident about prospects in the short term.”
Greater Manchester Chamber will be conducting the Business Monitor survey every week to provide up to the minute data on the ongoing impact of the coronavirus on local businesses.
The Chamber is working closely with key agencies across Greater Manchester and at a national level to ensure the feedback from business is represented and action is taken to offset major sustained economic and social damage.