Recovery goals offer clarity, basis for business planning


YESTERDAY Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin announced a four-phase Covid-19 recovery plan. Since the pandemic hit our shores and the first movement control order (MCO) was enforced on March 18 last year, this is the first time the government has come up with an exit strategy for tackling the coronavirus.

For the business community, this provides some clarity after over a year of uncertainty over how we plan to wriggle ourselves out of this public health-cum-economic crisis. Ever since the first MCO, we have been groping in the dark for directions on how to walk the tightrope between saving lives and saving livelihoods.

On one hand, we understand why restrictions that are harmful to economic sectors, such as the no dine-in rule, have to be imposed and why businesses that encourage close contact, such as bars and pubs, have to be shuttered. On the other hand, there’s only so much burden businesses can shoulder before bottomline realities set in.

To make things worse, the uncertainties over how much longer we have to put up with the economically choking restrictions and what new SOPs could be rolled out make business planning an exercise in futility.

But yesterday, the government finally unveiled the goals that need to be achieved before restrictions are lifted. For example, phase two of the MCO will come into effect when daily infections dip below 4,000 and the vaccination rate reaches 10%.

In phase two, more economic sectors will open and 80% of the workforce will be allowed back at the workplace but social events will remain barred as will interstate travel.

While the business community would prefer the social sectors to reopen and the ban on interstate travel lifted, the government, by announcing the conditions early, has given the business community the room and confidence to make medium- and long-term plans –  something many of us have been unable to do before this.

For example, we can now plan weeks or months ahead in anticipation of whether or not restrictions will be lifted or whether tighter ones will kick in, based on the number of daily infections and occupancy rate of hospital beds.

With the national immunisation plan picking up pace and reaching as high as 200,000 doses a day, we can expect daily cases to not just dip, but to drop at an increasing speed. As it is, the country’s R-naught had earlier this week fallen below the critical 1.0 rate.

With this, together with the certainty and clarity elucidated in the recovery plan, businesses can now look forward to a slow, but eventual return to the pre-pandemic days we all hanker after. – June 16, 2021.

* YS Khong reads The Malaysian Insight.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.


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