Survey on Power Shutdown Impacts reveals 95% of businesses affected
The Survey hopes to provide feedback from businesses and provide information to assist decision makers, Government agencies and NCOC in looking at ways to best support businesses adapt and mitigate business losses during these situations.
A survey conducted by the Niue Chamber of Commerce (NCOC) earlier this month on the recent Power Shutdown Impacts on Business Continuity has been released.
Niue Chamber of Commerce Chief Executive Officer -Catherine Papani revealed to BCN News that 95% of respondents on the survey indicated their business was significantly impacted by the recent power interruptions on the island.
Papani says the survey also revealed interesting data that indicated there was a need to look at the power situation.
“Majority of our businesses are micro to small business enterprise, so investing in these renewable energy sources is quite an expensive undertaking, so we want to look at ways we can potentially find financial mechanism to assist businesses to take up that option of moving to renewable energy or have a back up plan, she said.
“We had a lot of disgruntle businesses a lot of businesses that suffered losses at that time so what we did with the survey is to get some information and data to provide to us is how we can assist our businesses going forward,” she said.
Papani also revealed that an estimated cost of loss was over a hundred thousand dollars when it comes to appliances like computers and mainly fridges for these businesses especially in the food and beverage and accommodation sector.
“We also got an indication of how much in value businesses lost with a total respondent, we estimated over a hundred thousand in relation to appliances and computers mainly fridges for a lot businesses,” she said.
She said one of the good things they saw from the survey feedback is that 43% of businesses had continuity plans for situations like this, while 57.1% businesses did not have a plan.
The survey consisted of 15 questions with 71.4% female and 28.6% Male participating in the survey.
The Survey hopes to provide feedback from businesses and provide information to assist decision makers, Government agencies and NCOC in looking at ways to best support businesses adapt and mitigate business losses during these situations.
