Entrepreneur calls for ‘special consideration’ for Old Harbour

We need some measures to help to curtail the spiralling spread of the virus because we can't continue like this. However, there is a flip side to these curfew measures, especially in the Old Harbour area.

Old Harbour is made up of primarily small businesses. You have the wholesales, you have the market, you have the fishing village and other supplementary businesses. While we have a robust commercial environment they are predominantly small businesses. Small businesses are more susceptible to changes in the economy than any other large business because they basically don’t have strong reserves. And again, it's difficult to map the performances of small businesses because they don't keep proper records and they don't monitor their businesses like the other large entities, but they are very, very vital. As the government had said in the past the small business is the engine for growth for Jamaica. So it's very important. With that being said any movement in opening hours will have an adverse effect on small businesses.

The reduction in opening hours, the closing down of weekends of commercial activities, that is not good for small businesses. A case in point; we are approaching the Easter break and you know that the wholesalers would have purchase inventories in anticipation of the demand for bun and cheese. A week before this Easter break you are now being told that your opening hours is going to be reduced. It means that these inventories now going to become obsolete, spoil… because cheese don't really have a long shelf life and along with the volume of cheese that you would purchase during this period that would be solely for the Easter break. Again the fishing village: persons normally eat bun and fish during this period. While the government will give an extension for all these persons to operate it still creates some form of limitation, especially for the no-movement days. Another point, majority of the Old Harbour residents are working in Kingston. So as a resident who is working in Kingston, you have to contend with the traffic to come over in the evenings. By the time you traverse the traffic and you reach Old Harbour, you are tired. You don't want to go and shop. You just want to go home.
Kingston has PriceSmart, Kingston has MegaMart and larger shopping businesses that you can go to. So rather than coming to Old Harbour to shop it would be easier for you to shop in Kingston and then come over to Old Harbour and rest. But in such a scenario Old Harbour businesses stand to lose in a major way, because its residents who work in Kingston will spend their money in the corporate area to further suffocate the local economy in Old Harbour. With that being said I am proposing that Old Harbour get an extension. Rather than closing at 12 noon, let us go up until three o'clock, which would give ample time for persons coming home. Rather than going to MegaMart to struggle in the line after you finish, the traffic in Kingston, the long driving, you have enough time to come home to purchase goods for your long weekend.

Again, businesses operating in this shorten time frame, you really don't have enough operating time to cover your fixed cost. But I don't think you can cover your daily fixed cost with the changes, but at least you would have sufficient time to reduce the exposure that your fixed costs would have if you had not closed for the entire day. A case in point, you still have to pay salaries whether or not you open or not. You can't say that you're not paying your employees. But if you open for an extended hour, you probably will get revenue in to supplement that fixed costs that you have on a daily basis.

So with all of this being said I believe special consideration should be given to small businesses and by extension a special consideration should be given to Old Harbour. We’re a bunch of small businesses and we cannot compete in this cluster of shortened opening hours, no movement days. It's very, very difficult to operate. We understand what the government wants to achieve, we understand the severity of this spiralling virus, but we are just asking for little more consideration, a little bit more flexibility so we can survive.

In my business we make decision based on gathering data. I believe that whenever you're making a decision, you need to provide not just the data but the information that you have obtained from the data gathering to prove your point because it gives a higher level of confidence in the outcome you want to achieve. So I agree with you that the government should have produced this level of information to say that when we have the curfew at 10 o'clock the virus spread at X rate but now that we have reduced it to eight o’clock, the virus is lower and under better constraint. Or they could say that ‘now that we have reduced it to eight o'clock we’re now seeing more parties being carried out, we are now seeing more unruly behaviour, and when we factor that we can trace that to the spiral movement of the virus’. It’s always good to present that information and to obtain that data and to carry out proper modelling.

Kamar Muir is founder and director of iStrategy Limited, a business analytics and accounting firm. Send feedback to istrategyltd20@gmail.com or editorial@oldharbournews.com