Businesses from Palau and small Pacific states are urged to participate in the ongoing Pacific Trade Invest (PTI) Pacific Business Monitor Report survey
“It would be really fantastic if each country throughout the 15 waves (of the survey) got more than 20 so we could do a specific country report,
The survey aims to track the impact of COVID-19 on Pacific business and be useful to national governments, donors and regional institutions as they try to support the recovery of the private sector.
Australian-based Pacific Trade Commissioner Caleb Jarvis said if PTI receives 20 or more respondents from a particular country, they will do a separate country update.
He said that there were some respondents from Palau
” It would be really fantastic if each country throughout the 15 waves (of the survey) got more than 20 so we could do a specific country report“
“We do a lot with the tourism industry in Palau and we help those businesses become digitally-enabled so we definitely have had surveys filled in from Palau. Marshall Islands, Micronesia and from the North Pacific,” Jarvis said.
“It would be really fantastic if each country throughout the 15 waves (of the survey) got more than 20 so we could do a specific country report, “ he added.
Jarvis said that the Pacific Business Monitor is a longitudinal study that will capture the sentiments of businesses over a longer period of time.
It follows the success of PTI’s exporter survey which has been conducted every 2
years for the past 8 years.
“With Palau we had people businesses complete the Pacific export survey and the problems and the learnings that we have in Palau are similar to the feedback we have in Tonga that’s why I am pulling the feedback together,” he said.
He said the new Pacific Monitor was created in response to the lack of quantitative data about the impact of COVID-19 on the region’s private sector. It will conduct a total of 15 surveys – with a new survey every two weeks.
In the survey, released this week, 88% of businesses reporting a negative impact of COVID-19 while 90% reported a decline in revenue .
The survey further added that 92% believe the crisis will have a negative impact on the local economy.
It also noted that 70% of businesses are hopeful that they will survive COVID-19.
Fifty percent believe revenue will not return to pre-COVID levels until 2021 or later.
Forty percent of businesses said they need support to access new markets from either local or overseas.