Nearly half of 707 businesses that participated in a Stats SA survey said that they did not have the financial resources to continue operating through the Covid-19 outbreak.
Stats SA conducted a rapid-response survey asking businesses how the current crisis was affecting their operations. 42.2% of respondents said that they would not survive.
When asked how long business could continue without turnover, 54% of respondents indicated that they could only survive for one to three months.
Almost half of responding businesses have temporarily closed their doors and the industries reporting the highest percentages of temporary closure or paused trading activity were construction, manufacturing, trade and mining.
180 businesses from the manufacturing industry took part in the survey and 71 business from the trade industry participated, but the majority of respondents come from a category Stats SA defines as ‘Other’ with a total of 240 business responding.
