COVID-19, MSMEs, AND THE INFORMAL SECTOR

• Main Authors: Jimenez, Shieradel, Habarada, Raymund B, Mia, Ian Benedict R.
• Format: text
• Published: Animo Repository 2021
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/res_cbrd/7; https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/context/res_cbrd/article/1030/viewcontent/DLSU_Business_Notes_and_Briefings_Vol._9_No._1.pdf
• Institution: De La Salle University

Reden is the owner of a small online vegetable delivery service in Marikina. The lockdown saw the increase in the daily transactions that his small enterprise usually receives in a day – from 60 to 300. Reden counts himself lucky. However, he did experience difficulty in sourcing and transporting his vegetables due to the tighter government restrictions. Reden is lucky compared to the 90,000 micro-, small-, and medium- sized enterprises (MSMEs) that had closed down by September 2020 (Romero & Romero, 2020), six months after the first community lockdown. Among those MSMEs that had to close down was the private kindergarten school located a few meters away from Reden’s vegetable warehouse. Owned by Ellen, the school had been educating kids living in the community for the last two decades. Already plagued by declining enrolees due to the increased competition, Ellen's cash reserves had been continuously decreasing. Like other MSME owners (Macaraeg, 2020), Ellen continued paying her employees a month after the lockdown, but the school's continuing expenses were already eating into her personal savings. Ellen has plans to reopen the school, but as to when, she has yet to decide.