by Sha’ri Mohd Yusof
This year saw an unprecedented dropped in economic activities amongst countries of the world. Major economies are faced with drastic reduction in GDP as reported in OECD Economic Outlook. This is due to Covid -19 pandemic that struck the world. The world is faced with very low traveling activities, reduced demand for non-essential items as consumers are cautious on spending due to the uncertainty that many people are experiencing.
For government servants, with almost permanent positions, they may not be subjected with lost of income or even to be lay off in Malaysia and most other countries. The worries are from all other sectors such as electrical and electronics, tourism industry (badly affected), transportation. Probably the communications and computing equipment may not be affected since the pandemic have forced people to employ digital technologies to work from home, study from home, and probably social activities in virtual world such as conferences.
Education sector hit by reduced foreign students that contribute quite good income to private sector education especially. Not able to recruit one new student may incur loss of RM15k to RM30k income per semester. Society will also lose out from a lower occupancy of houses or rooms by the foreign students. And also other loss income from the travel, food, utilities, stationaries, computing, printing that one student will need to do when they enroll in a tertiary program in Malaysia.
The medical tourism will also lose income from the medical services offered to foreigners such as from Indonesia, and adding to that is the accommodation, traveling, and food expenses by the patient seeking treatment. According to the Medical Healthcare Chronicles industry report 2009-2019, in 2018 alone the Malaysian medical tourism is worth RM 1.8 billion with almost 1.2 million medical tourists arrivals (NST). On of the biggest market is Indonesia and with the pandemic, these patients will probably resort to seeking treatment in their home country. Trying to consult sick people online may not be attractive to many people since health is not something that can be diagnosed without personally attending to the patient’s emotions.
SMEs producing non essential products will surely be affected. Since staying home is the main advice given by the authorities, people will not be out window shopping and impulse buying things such as decorations, household items, clothing and others deemed non-essential during this pandemic. This will in turn result in SMEs not manufacturing these items as they used to have the volume pre-Covid. People will only resort to essential items or must have items for the purpose of household functioning and ‘operations’ such as food items, basic clothing, items which have been spoilt, damaged, requiring repair or maintenance, and medical related items for our health. Consumers will invest in purchasing supplements to boost immunity against sickness including Covid, sports equipment and gear to keep healthy, and the items that comply to the new norms such as face mask, hand sanitizers and probably temperature measurement devices.
Global business have been affected by disrupted in supply chain and logistics. How do get parts. materials, components say from China to the rest of the world in a time when there are limited transportation available such as shipping and worse still air cargo. Even if the ships are sailing from one port to another, how are we sure that the ports still operate at full capacity during this lockdown, semi lockdown, and restrictions by governments to ensure the disease does not spread during the handling of the goods at the ports. At the same time, are there transportation such as trucks available and at the right price. This pandemic has definitely revealed the weaknesses of the existing supply chain management business models adopted by most industries.
Further Readings /References
Quality From Classroom to Our Life 
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