By Augustine Arunah
MON, APRIL 13 2020-theG&BJournal- Nobody knows or can determine the duration of the Covid-19 pandemic, when we will come out of it or when we will get a safe nod to resume our daily lives. As it stands, businesses will fold up, jobs will be lost, and many lives will be no more.
But for those that survive, there must be hope and continuity. How we will be able to pick ourselves back up will be heavily determined on the individual business and government.
Taking a critical look at the recovery scenario, we will say that the government needs to pick itself up and act like a government should, like they truly have a responsibility of meaningfully improving the lot of Nigerians.
The centralized operations and decision making in the economy will not work and needs to be revisited.
The fact that different government ministries and agencies roll out often conflicting policies, rules and regulations that benefit them independently without considerations for businesses whose operations depends on and cuts across various ministries, is already a barrier to development.
When we finally get to open Nigeria for business again, I doubt the economy will bounce back within 6 months, and so government does not need to go back to its normal ways of getting results by forcing unwarranted increase in rates and taxes to meet its obligations.
The most important obligation of the government post COVID-19 is to bring back business operations to the economy, and with a sense of security–not only for lives and property, but also for human rights and contractual tenure in business.
Government needs to refocus its priorities. Economic recovery and stability should be key. Polices that would enable a smooth and hitch-free return of activities should be at the forefront of government plans.
Projects need to be suspended; running costs need to be reviewed because the pandemic hit everyone across the globe. We should be strategic at our borrowing going forward. We need to do a complete review of every aspect of our lives, every aspect of governance across board to provide for ourselves policies and rules that would positively impact us specifically for our own business operating environment without making any reference to other country’s policies and case.
We should formulate laws that would be beneficial to us, and tailored to our peculiar behavioural and understanding manner. At this time, it is difficult to put a figure on the impact of the COVID-19 on the economy but we are on surely on the brink of recession.
Fiscal and monetary policies need to be properly structured to guide recovery. The need to look into various businesses in various industries to formulate action plans that would lead to their stabilisation and to improve operations and productivity should be considered for the creation of avenues to improve wealth mobilisation.
To restart operation will be difficult for many firms. Companies will definitely need to review their production process, supply chain and workforce. The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) stimulus package to support households and Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) affected by the COVID-19 pandemics a good incentive. But financial aid and injection will not work for all, bearing in mind that not all business will get the assistance and not every business will meet its requirements. Many businesses or industries may even prefer policy changes and improvements to financial injections.
The work to return the economy back on track should not be done as business as usual. We need to be very careful in the decisions and policies so as not to end up in a worse situation. This is a time to reboot the economy to make it beneficial to all.
Augustine Arunah, writes from Lagos, Nigeria
|twitter:@theGBJournal|email: info@govandbusinessjournal.com.ng|
