29 August 2021
Southland Businesses Thankful for Resurgence Support Payment
An Invercargill business owner says if it wasn’t for the Covid-19 Resurgence Support Payment she will struggle to restock her cafe.
Tuatara Lodge co-owner Nicola McGilvray said the fund would probably cover about 20 per cent of expenses, but she still planned to apply for it.
“To be honest, I think if we didn’t have that, we would be struggling to find the capital to even purchase our restocking stuff.
“I was actually quite thankful because I was thinking what on earth are we going to do, there’s no money coming in, and we’ve got to buy all this stock,” she said.
The payment is intended to help businesses with costs such as rent or fixed costs during alert level 2 or higher.
To qualify businesses had to experience at least a 30 per cent decline in revenue over seven days as a result of the increase in alert levels, as well as other eligibility criteria.
It would be a one-off payment and businesses could apply for it alongside the wage subsidy scheme.
The Government can also decide to activate the RSP scheme multiple times if there are multiple alert level increases from level one. Businesses and organisations can apply for the RSP each time it is activated as long as they met the criteria.
It took a lot of work to re-open the cafe in 2020 after the lockdown and McGilvray had admitted she had been contemplating if it was worth opening again.
“That’s being pretty drastic, but the thought was there … it takes a good year to build everything back up. It’s a huge, huge loss,” she said.
It was especially tough this time around because there had been no warning beforehand about the lockdown, so the business had faced losses from the get go, McGilvray said.
It took a lot of work to start up a business again because you had to replace wastage … thousands of dollars worth of food that was thrown out, she said.
“… or you have to find that money from somewhere that you haven’t been generating.”
Otautau Hotel co-owner Kim Taylor said applying for the RSP was easy and the money had already come through for the business.
“There’s a lot of costs involved in closing down your business for any given period of time. Especially a hospitality business where there’s food,” she said.
Taylor thought that along with the RSP and the wage subsidy, it would help cover some outgoings to make it fair but there would obviously still be other costs, as there was no income coming in.
“How bottomless is the pit of money, you know,” she said.
While the business would not make up for the sales they had lost, Taylor said she had appreciated what was received through the RSP to help the business through with its outgoing costs.
Southland Chamber of Commerce chief executive officer Sheree Carey said 27 per cent of the workforce in Southland was still up and running.
However, that did not mean those businesses that were still operational were not accruing losses, she said.
So, it would be hard to say if only businesses who had closed could be applying for the RSP in Southland, Carey said.
“I would say to anybody who is shut and have no revenue to get the money that you are entitled to. You can use it to cover your rent, your overhead, all of that stuff,” she said.
Published by Stuff.co.nz – 29 August 2021