COVID-19 continues to affect businesses and individuals around the world. It is a fast-moving issue and new regulations are emerging from both national and local government. For instance, last week the Prime Minister announced new measures to fight the spread of the virus, including a reduction in domestic flights and a strengthening of worker protections.
Yesterday, the Prime Minister announced new “social distancing” measures which will be in force until April 15th. These stipulate that people should maintain a minimum distance of two meters in social interactions and gatherings of more than two people in public places are prohibited. The Prime Minister also announced that public transportation should stop and the use of private vehicles be minimized. Meanwhile, factories have to be disinfected and workers are required to wear face masks and keep a safe distance from one another. You can read more about it here.
EuroCham is in continuous correspondence with the government and individual ministries, providing our input on the new regulations being drafted to deal with the pandemic. We are also in dialogue with other bodies including VCCI and authorities in HCMC and Hanoi, to raise the specific issues affecting our members and their business operations. We will continue to advocate for supportive measures to help European enterprises weather this storm and to help our member companies recover once the pandemic is under control.
You can help us to do this by responding to our survey on the impacts of COVID-19. You should have received a link last week and it should take no more than a few minutes to complete. We’ve had around 150 responses so far, and the results have been striking. Over 90% of our respondents say that their business has been negatively affected by COVID-19, with 51.3% being ‘significantly’ and 40.1% being ‘moderately negatively affected’. Meanwhile, almost three-quarters say that the COVID-19 situation is increasing their operating costs. So far, around two-thirds of respondents (67.8%) say that deferring taxes such as PIT, CIT and VAT would be the measure most beneficial for their business.
There is still time to respond to our survey, if you haven’t done so already. In the meantime, we want to keep our members as informed as possible, and we will continue to share the latest news on our social media pages. So please don’t forget to follow us for the latest news and developments.
