Pandemic ‘kills’ more than 150,000 small businesses in Mexico

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The health crisis has caused an annual contraction of 18.7% of GDP in the second quarter of the year and the disappearance of almost one million formal jobs.

 More than 150,000 small businesses in Mexico have definitively closed due to a 30% drop in private consumption due to the Covid-19 crisis, the National Alliance of Small Merchants (Anpec) reported on Thursday.

Despite the “new normal” that began in June, more than 95% of the businesses do not present gains in their sales compared to March, informed Cuauhtémoc Rivera, president of the association, when presenting the results of the survey “For an Economic Reactivation ”.

Más de 150.000 pequeños negocios cierran en México por la crisis -

“7% say they are at the closing point. The sector has barely stayed afloat for seven months. Similarly, 75.35% say they have declining sales between an average of 30 to 50% ”, commented the leader of Anpec.

In addition to the more than 90,000 deaths and close to 906,000 cases, the Covid-19 pandemic has caused an annual contraction of 18.7% of GDP in the second quarter of the year and the disappearance of almost a million formal jobs.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has affirmed that Mexico’s economy “has already hit bottom” and is now “going up”, by boasting a plan of more than one million loans of 25,000 pesos for microentrepreneurs.

But the Anpec survey carried out on more than 1,100 small businesses, found that 74.8% of them “generally disapprove” of the government’s results so far, while 66.28% consider economic support “unattractive” and “insufficient”.

“It stands out and worries that 96.83% of small merchants said that 50% of their customers have decreased their consumption and the quality of the products they buy,” Rivera lamented.

The survey is released amid a national alert for the rebound in infections in at least eight states in the country, where governors have warned of new closures similar to March, when the isolation measures began.

Although specialists argue that Mexico has not even stopped the first wave of infections, merchants warned that a second would be fatal for their businesses.

“The winter outbreak requires a change from those responsible for managing the pandemic and a change in strategy that prioritizes tracking to contain infections and deaths,” said the representative of Anpec.

Despite the government’s commitment, more than half of the merchants, 51.55%, rejected that the vaccine “is the only solution for an economic reactivation.”

The union also asserted that 98% of the points of sale apply sanitary measures, such as social distancing, the use of face masks, and the disinfection of spaces.

Source: infobae.com, forbes.com.mx

Mexico Daily Post