83.9 percent of the industries believed that their economic performance after COVID-19 has a high to moderate growth in their activities
Despite the fact that the country’s large industries have recovered after the COVID-19 pandemic, micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) have lagged behind and have not been able to recover all the lost qualified employees on their payrolls and still persist lower sales or liquidity problems.
This is one of the findings of the “Study on the local manufacturing industry before and after the restriction measures due to the COVID-19 pandemic: survey of good practices”, carried out by the Universidad Iberoamericana (Unibe), with the support of the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Mipymes (MICM).
“The large companies surveyed report a recovery in the level of their permanent jobs, with the exception of the micro and medium-sized industries, for which a certain lag is observed,” say the results.
It adds that the statistics of the Social Security Treasury (TSS) and the General Directorate of Internal Taxes (DGII) report a recovery of 92.7% in the number of employees hired in the local manufacturing sector in 2020. and that in 2021 it grew 4.9%. As of August 2022, the interannual growth rate of the number of employees hired in the sector was -0.04%.
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Economic performance
83.9% of the industries believe that their economic performance after COVID-19 has ranged from high to moderate growth in their activities and operations. Of this total, 22.6% consider that it has experienced a high increase and 61.3% responded that its growth has been moderate.
On the other hand, 9.7% believed that their operations had a reduction and 6.5% have stagnation.
The study reveals that 67.7% of the industries registered an increase in their local sales volumes after the pandemic, while 12.9% reported that they remained at the same level and 19.4% indicated a reduction.
42.9% of the industries responded that their income had grown at a rate between 5% and 10%; Likewise, 23.8% increased their sales between 11% and 15%.
In addition, after COVID-19, 80.0%, 66.7% and 46.7% of the industries reveal that they exported to destinations in the Caribbean, North America and Central America, respectively.
