Question

When the whole COVID-19 pandemic is over, who will emerge better off? Who will have lost? Some struggle, but some thrive during this crisis. You can find relevant articlesregarding business opportunities and threats arising from COVID-19 crisis, and share with the class.  Please be sure to add your own insights and comments and draw clear links to the course content.

Answer 1

To global COVID-19 pandemic has brought the world market down on their knees as global lockdown continues and nobody is absolutely sure for how long this lockdown will continue. This lockdown and fear amongst the crisis have led the countries into economic slowdown which in case if continued further will contribute to the rise of recession. Before this pandemic, the oil prices between Russia and OPEC club already struggled to keep up the price and the fall of oil prices in the global market has brought down the stock markets.

Amidst the crisis there lies opportunities as well as threats to many industries. One of the industries which are worst affected is the manufacturing industry. The manufacturing industry involves the arrangement of raw materials, movement, and shipment of their products. The operations at the places of the mass gathering are curtailed by the government in order to take steps towards social distancing and prevention of this COVID-19. The automobile industry has shut down its operations, as they have already lost the majority of their sales and revenues and slow down in the automobile industry was expected.

As the virus originated from China, and China is a major raw material supplier to the pharma, electronic and automobiles industry, and therefore shutting down their operations has costed the importer countries hit by large margins of their operations. The countries which outsourced their process of assembly and intermediate goods at China to exploit the options of cheap labour rates and raw materials are facing immediate closure of their operations. This marks the tensions and problems on the future of the business of importing countries and their further relations with importing business.

Talking about the pharmaceutical industries, among this COVID-19 outbreak, it has been a fortune to the pharmaceutical companies as sales of hand sanitizers, medicines related to the acute respiratory syndrome, demands for medical equipment such as PPE suits, gloves, masks, etc. for the healthcare industries and the general public has skyrocketed. Many of the pharmaceutical companies are working overtime and even 24-hours a day to meet the demands. The medical shops have run out of medical masks and sanitizers and it has been reported that many of them are involved in black marketing the essential commodities in the market. Therefore, for pharmaceutical companies, it has been a blessing in disguise for their business operations.

For the FMCG industry, the companies manufacturing essential daily use groceries have initially faced challenges by sudden country-wide lock down but recovered more than expectations when customers started stocking up the groceries in fear of prolonged lockdown period and unsure of getting groceries and daily essential products back again in the market. There has been a shortage of toilet paper rolls in the whole country of Australia, many of the European countries have gone stock out their liquor products except Corona Beer.

The IT industry has been the only segment that has been unaffected by the consequences of the COVID-19. The work from home culture, the access of internet connection worldwide, online meetings and strategy planning has provided an alternate way of operating their business and providing services to their clients. It has given them the confidence to the IT firms that their operations will be unaffected as well as employment is not a point of concern for the workforce working at IT which once used to be known by the industry of layoffs and pay cuts.

The daily wage workers and the migrant workers are amongst the most severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic as their livelihood and daily food have been already exhausted. They are solely dependent upon government relief activities and shelter for poor's accommodations to get help for their food and daily needs. The government is making sure that none of their people are deprived of basic necessities and relief programs. The government is investing most of its capital in the relief programs, maintaining law and orders, and provide support for the healthcare industry operations. In the long run, it will affect the infrastructure development and the market development but it is the need of the hour therefore the economic slowdown is expected but it is also expected that the world will recover from the same soon.