The ongoing crisis of Coronavirus hit thousands of businesses and walks of life. Meanwhile, Spain is one of the worst-hit countries, Malaga is one of those. Two out of every three companies in Spanish state Malaga have not yet been able to recover the level of business activity they had before the outbreak of Covid-19. In fact, almost 20% of the province’s businesses are billing less than half of what they used to do and another 7% are completely closed, according to the ‘Andalusia Business Confidence Indicators’ published today by the Institute of Statistics and Cartography of Andalusia (IECA). Only 27% of the businesses surveyed say they are at levels of activity similar to those before the pandemic and 10.7% say that they now bill more. Those of Malaga are the worst figures in all of Andalusia due to the high weight in its productive structure of tourism, the sector most affected by the crisis.
61% of the province’s businesses rate their situation as negative in the last quarter of 2020 and the same percentage believe that it will also do badly at the start of this year.
There is another stark figure that stands out from the myriad of data contained in this study. 37% of Malaga companies have had to lay off employees or not renew contracts in the second half of 2020. In addition, a third of the surveyed businesses have taken refuge in an ERTE and of these, the majority have all their employees affected by the same.
Business Confidence Does Not Go Back
It is not surprising that the mood of the majority of Malaga businessmen is pessimistic. In the last quarter of 2020, less than 10% of those surveyed by the IECA have experienced a “favorable” situation, compared to almost 62% who rate it as “unfavorable”. And optimism is not greater when asked about how they think the first quarter of 2021 will be: 61% have a negative expectation, compared to only 8.6% who believe that it will go well. Malaga has the lowest level of business confidence in the region.
Thus, the Harmonized Business Confidence Index has barely improved with the passage from one year to the next in Malaga: it has only increased by 0.33% in the first quarter of 2021 compared to the previous quarter. The drop compared to a year ago is more than 35 points.
