A second-round survey released on Thursday by Namibia’s Statistics Agency (NSA) shows that 87.8 percent of businesses are adversely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic compared to the 96.5 percent that was reported in the first round of the survey released in May.
Statistician-General Alex Shimuafeni said the slight change is attributed to the opening up of the economy following the lockdown period that was covered in the first round of the survey.
“The survey indicated that almost half of the businesses (48 percent) continued to trade partially as compared to 50 percent that operated partially during the first round of the survey,” he said.
According to Shimuafeni, although the government introduced some relief packages in order to mitigate the impact of COVID-19, the survey results show that only 23.7 percent of the businesses managed to obtain such relief packages during this period.
Meanwhile, according to the survey, a significant amount of businesses (30.2 percent) reported having laid-off workers during the state of emergency period, thus an indication of high unemployment during the prevailing pandemic period.
The first round of the survey covered the period from April 30 to May 11, while the second round of the survey was conducted from July 27 to August 7. A sample list of 619 formal businesses across 16 sectors of the economy was used for this survey.
