Businesses fear another lockdown due to rise in Covid cases - CSO survey

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has published the results of the sixth wave of its Business Impact of Covid-19 Survey (BICS).

Wave Six of the BICS release captures important information on business in Ireland as society and the economy continued to reopen.

The online survey was sent to a sample of 3,000 businesses and the information was collected between  August 25 and September 9.The response rate to the survey was 25.5%.

Commenting on the results, statistician, Colin Hanley, said: "The results show that on August 23, 96.3% of responding enterprises were trading in some capacity, 2.5% of enterprises had ceased trading temporarily while 1.2% had ceased trading permanently.

"However, while most respondents were trading, not all were trading at full capacity. Almost two thirds (63.3%) of enterprises were trading at normal capacity levels while 33.0% were trading at partial capacity.

"More than half (50.5%) of responding enterprises reported lower than normal turnover for the four-week period, July 27 to August 23. Turnover exceeded operating costs for more than half (56.4%) of respondents.

"Responding enterprises spent an average of 4.4% of expenditure on measures to comply with Covid-19 requirements.

"Micro enterprises (less than 10 persons engaged) spent an average of 6.1% of expenditure on Covid-19 measures.

"Office based enterprises had an average of 57.7% of staff working remotely in the week ending August 23 compared to an average of 12.9% of staff working for non-office based enterprises. Almost a quarter (23.2%) of enterprises plan to make remote working, in some capacity, a permanent fixture.

"Among the leading concerns for businesses operating during the Covid-19 pandemic were increases in the number of Covid-19 cases leading to another lockdown (48.6%), reduced demand due to lower consumer confidence (36.7%) and staff well-being (29.4%).

"It is important to note that the results presented in the survey represent responding enterprises only and are unweighted."