Business: Delays to level 2 will cost jobs
Monday, 11 May 2020
Business representatives are calling for the Government to move the country to level 2 as quickly as possible and warn that the longer the delay, the more businesses that will go under and jobs lost.
The Government will announce at 4pm whether New Zealand will remain in level 3 or transition to level 2, and when such a move could happen.
Alan McDonald, head of advocacy and strategy for the Employers and Manufacturers Association said any delay would mean more businesses would go to the wall.
He said his organisation took more than a thousand calls last week and 50 per cent related to concerns about business survival.
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'The longer it goes on, the more difficult those conversations become.'
Kirk Hope, chief executive of BusinessNZ said, if the Government was satisfied with its border security and quarantine process and had sufficient contact tracing capacity - as it said it did - there would be no reason to delay the shift.
'If those conditions are met with a high level of confidence, as we are told they are, we should be able to move to level 2 as soon as possible.'
Sharon Zollner, chief economist at ANZ, said she supported a move to level 2.
'Life is full of trade-offs, and we can’t drive the risk on the virus front to zero without massively increasing the risks elsewhere.
'When it comes to it, economic outcomes and health outcomes are very closely linked. At an economy-wide level we have to earn the money to pay for a good health system, and at a household level there’s a very close link between income and health outcomes. So even if you want to think about it purely in terms of human health rather than the unpleasant thought exercise of pitting dollars against lives, avoiding unnecessary economic damage is an imperative,' she said.
She said, although South Korea and Germany had seen transmission increase again after lockdowns eased, countries could not stay locked down forever.
'New Zealand is so close to eradication that we have a better shot at doing it once and doing it right.
'Repeated rounds of lockdown such as other countries are looking at are just about the worst environment for business investment and employment that one can imagine.
'Of course down the track if there is never a successful vaccine then we have a problem and one day might decide we just have to open up and take it on the chin. But even in that case, there will be better knowledge of the virus, better treatments, and we will have bought ourselves valuable time to amp up the health system to cope better. I hope the Government allocates huge funds for health in the Budget.'