More than four-fifths of Indonesian SMEs have started to operate normal full hours. (Photo: AFP) The survey highlights the increasing confidence among consumers and businesses in the grassroots that Southeast Asia’s largest economy has managed to curb COVID-19 infections, and stepped up its vaccination programme.
The survey on 505 respondents across Indonesia was conducted by the affiliate of Indonesia's second-largest lender Bank Mandiri.
It revealed that 84.8 percent of the businesses have started operating normally. This compares with 35.2 percent which operated on normal hours in the middle of last year - where another 34.5 percent of them then operated on limited hours and 30.4 percent were forced to close temporarily.
As many as 49 percent of the respondents run their business in Java, the most populous island, while 22 percent were in Sumatera, 16 percent in Kalimantan, and the remaining in other places across the world's largest archipelagic nation.
According to the Mandiri Institute survey, small businesses in Indonesia have retrenched between two to four people since the pandemic started, while medium-sized businesses cut headcount by an average of 18./.
VNA
