The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

A delivery firm yesterday said revenue improvement needs more than a delayed curfew start, adding that the economy must also be sparked into life to increase employment.

Granville Collie, MUTRU’s chief executive, told Tribune Business yesterday that more people have to get back to full-time work in order for his business to pick up.

“Things are pretty much the same, a lot of businesses are still closed down. I guess we have to see what happens with the curfew extensions and with the new government being in and all of that,” Mr Collie said.

“With a lot of our vendors being limited, I wouldn’t say anything has changed as much. We’re actively marketing in order to get new business, but in terms of previous clients, we haven’t seen that much change from them.”

Merchants are still feeling the pinch of COVID-19’s economic fall-out regardless of the nightly curfew’s start being pushed back from 9pm to 11.59pm. Despite the macroeconomic challenges, however, Mr Collie said: “We’re moving in the right direction with some lifting of the restrictions. We just have to wait and see what the new government will do now.

“I have seen a few members of parliament speak about the total removal of the curfew, so there is some hope and we are very hopeful for the new government. We hope that with the ease in restrictions things will begin to go back to normal.

“Other than that I have not seen any pick up in sales volume since the curfew has been extended. The volume for this year has pretty much been the same. Earlier on in the year it was trending upwards, and then after a while things started to go down and since then we haven’t seen really that much pick up in business.

MUTRU has only picked up two additional business clients for the year. “Even for our vendors things are slow all around. I know we added some shoe vendors, but even with that people were still wondering if in-person sessions were going to continue so even they didn’t have much business coming in and that would pass on to us in terms of deliveries,” Mr Collie said.

“I think the economy has been at a standstill for several months now, and hopefully things start to move in the right direction in terms of the economy. We definitely need something to kickstart our economy a bit more. A lot of businesses still feel the brunt of it, and a lot of people generally need to get back to work, generally speaking.”