The pandemic affected revenues and sales of more than 55% of companies, and 39% had to temporarily shut down, Andrei Canda, managing partner at iSenseSolutions, said on Wednesday.

According to a new study, 16% of respondents mentioned the reduction in the number of employees, and 8% the partial interruption of activity. “The pandemic mainly affected the companies’ revenues and sales. 55% of them mentioned it in the first place, and in the second place, almost 40% needed to temporarily stop their activity. However, there is also a niche. There are 5% among the companies that reported an increase in revenues during this period,” said Andrei Canda, according to Agerpres.

Andrei Canda stated that for 56% of companies the general economic situation in Romania is unfavorable for the business environment, for 31% it is neutral and for 13% it is favorable.

He said 8 out of 10 companies reported at least one difficulty caused by the pandemic. Thus, 49% mentioned the decrease in demand, 31% the activity temporarily suspended, 23% late payments, 21 – training and maintenance of staff, and 17% the instability of the leu.

For 37% of companies, digitalization is a great opportunity in the current context. 3 out of 10 companies consider that the number of customers and suppliers will not decrease in 2020. To continue the activity, companies have chosen to transfer physical activities online (38%), but some of them have resorted to reducing the number of employees by sending them in technical unemployment (37%).