The world has experienced and continues to experience an unprecedented situation with the onset of an economic recession that has had a sudden impact on many sectors of activity, resulting in a multiform global crisis. Algeria has obviously also been hit hard by this terrible pandemic, finding itself faced with enormous challenges in preserving its population, ensuring the best possible health coverage and maintaining its economy. From an economic point of view, the almost total containment applied from March 2020 naturally had an impact on Algerian companies, the majority of which faced a slowdown in their activities, leading to a reduction in their resources and their workload, with the consequence of cuts and reductions in staff. These companies were also, and it is easy to understand this, prey to cash flow needs in order to face the payment of salaries and all the charges inherent to the good functioning of a company.

 

The role of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Oranje “CCIO” has been first and foremost to maintain spaces of consultation, dialogue and exchange in order not to break the link between economic operators, while setting up bridges in different fields (monitoring information on support systems, legal and tax advice, etc. . …) all this without neglecting the accompaniment of all those who have chosen to participate in the mobilisation to develop businesses in the fields of health, hygiene and prevention.

 

A special AD-HOC “COVID-19” committee was set up in the early days of the epidemic to pool, federate and support all the economic operators involved in the creation or development of medical or health products in order to increase our capacities in these fields. Indeed, the vast majority of companies have been affected by this pandemic, suffering significant losses of income and market share in all sectors of activity. However, if there is one sector that has perhaps been hit harder than another by the crisis, it is the events sector, It was the conclusions of a field study carried out by one of our partners, Evidencia Academy, that led us to move even closer to this sector to try and think about the possibilities of readjustment and resilience to overcome this crisis.

 

The manifest will of the public authorities to support and accompany businesses in this difficult period has resulted in the implementation of numerous support measures such as the postponement of bank payments, the allocation of aid to vulnerable employees, a relaxation of contractual deadlines, the cancellation of late payment penalties and many other support and aid measures that have enabled SMEs, SMIs and TPE to continue to exist. The partial recovery that is beginning to emerge under the combined effect of good management of the strictly sanitary crisis by the country’s authorities and the progress of the vaccination campaign augurs well for the future of economic activity in Algeria.

 

We at the Chamber of Commerce and Industry are convinced that the unprecedented context we have experienced could also accelerate the transition to a new diversified economic model with all the actors and creators of wealth, i.e. companies, whatever their size, nature or sector of activity, as the main lever to engage in a real reflection after this pandemic and to rediscover the paths to growth and prosperity for the greater good of humanity.

11/05/2021