Part One
‘Code Red” was raised by the Department of Health (DOH) on March 7, 2020 as the country’s risk of local transmission of the Covid-19 heightened with local cases in key cities of the country. While the number of confirmed cases remains around 10 as of this writing, managing employee hysteria amid expected rise in number confirmed cases of patients will prove challenging for start-up founders and micro, smal and medium-sized enterprises (MSME) business owners in the coming days.
While the immediate business risks have not impacted start-ups and MSMEs much over the past four months since the virus was announced in December 2019, the proclamation of local cases and the raising of code red by the DOH over the weekend are expected to be a big game changer for the smaller players in the economy.
This series of articles aims to address some of the key issues expected to arise and how founders and business owners need to prepare for them over the coming weeks. This is not aimed as a complete business continuity plan for start-ups and MSMEs and is limited to key business risk areas.
The proclamation of Code Red does not carry a direct impact to businesses but is addressed to concerned government agencies to prepare and be ready to implement planned response measures in line with DOH guidelines.
As part of this, the DOH has also recommended that the Office of the President will declare a State of Public Health Emergency, which will allow concerned government agencies to mobilize government funds with lesser bureaucracy for faster action to address any funding gaps needed to address and contain the local transmission of the virus.
This said, while the declaration of Code Red and a recommendation to declare a state of emergency will not have a direct business impact, the indirect business impact is expected to be highly unfavorable considering the growing hysteria over contagion of the disease in workplaces and key locations in the country.
Start-ups and MSMEs are likely the most economically vulnerable businesses in these volatile times, and founders need to be highly strategic at this point to avoid losing control of the business before the tide goes down. My column next week will focus on a few key business risks that companies have to prepare for in the coming days and weeks.
(To be continued)
Filbert Tsai is a Certified Public Accountant and is the chief strategist at UpSmart Strategy Consulting Inc.
This column accepts contributions from the business community dealing on the various aspects of relevant concerns of the community.. These can be e-mailed to boa.secretariat.@gmail.com.