Hospitality, textile sector reel from pandemic fallout amid lack of government support

Lima/ Peru-The textile industry in Peru is still suffering from the economic ramifications of the COVID-19 pandemic, as businessmen plead the authorities to come to their aid.

The president of a business association Susana Saldaña said they feel “abandoned” by the state.

“We are abandoned by the local government, by the central government, and by the metropolitan government. They have not helped us on this path and they are not helping us on our path to recovery. All the effort and everything we are achieving to recover is the efforts absolute of entrepreneurs.”

As for restaurants and the hospitality sector, the situation is far worse, as the manager of the hotels and restaurants, Freddy Gamarra, said the authorities’, measures have made the situation much worse for the sector.

“In the case of restaurants, the situation caused by the pandemic has been catastrophic. But more than the pandemic, it was the measures they implemented to control the pandemic. The fact is that as of December 2020, according to the Minister of Production. 220,000 restaurants had closed 100,000. That means more than a million people who lost their jobs.”

The production minister said that as of December 2020, more than a million people had lost their jobs in the restaurant and hospitality sector.

Sebastian Villa, Manager of Gastronomic Market “San Martín” said: “Right now there is a lot of concern. We are a gastronomic market that has fourteen entrepreneurship positions and in these two years that we have been in the pandemic and with the latest restrictions that have been coming since last year, since 2021, we have had many changes of brands This is because they have not been able to endure the changes and these are manifested immediately in the attendance of the public.

Meanwhile, Susana Saldaña, President of the Gamarra Peru Business Association said: “Two difficult years for us. Nobody had foreseen the pandemic. Not even how to react to it. And I think that the reaction, especially from the executive, has not been correct. Now we know. Because the balance that has left us is losses that exceed 4 billion soles. As a balance, more than 35% of businessmen have not yet returned to work. Many of them are, of course, bankrupt. We have not finished reactivating all our sectors. We have an average unemployment rate of 20 thousand commercial premises that are still unoccupied.”