24 March 2020
The final survey report and dataset of the 2019 Business Survey has today been released by St Helena Government’s (SHG) Statistics Office and is now available for download from the ‘Reports and Publications’ section of the SHG website.
Highlights from the report are:
- Overall, 21% of all businesses reported an increase in demand and 44% reported decreasing demand
- The industries with the most businesses reporting a decrease in demand were ‘construction’, and ‘accommodation and food services’ – 85% and 56% of businesses in each sector respectively
- The industries with most businesses reporting an increase in demand are ‘agriculture, forestry and fishing’ followed by ‘quarrying, manufacturing, electricity, water and sanitation’ – 31% and 28% respectively
- Only 21% of businesses reported that they are expanding: no construction businesses reported expansion and only 8% of accommodation and food service businesses reported that they are expanding
- 17% of businesses said that they will see a decrease in the number of employees in 2020, and 13% reported that they expect an increase
- Increasing costs remain one of the biggest issues for local businesses. 82% of them reported increasing costs, with 22% reporting that they were increasing dramatically
- Recruitment to some posts has been reported as a challenge. Businesses this year said that they found it difficult to recruit accountants, chefs, waiters, bricklayers, welders, authors/writers, hotel managers, IT support technicians, air conditioning and refrigeration mechanics and shop sales assistants.
The survey covered 142 private sector businesses on St Helena that employ at least one person; a small sample of 35 sole trader enterprises was also included. The total number of private sector employees in surveyed businesses with employees, both full-time and part-time, was 1,327 at the end of March 2019. The report includes various charts and tables, using classifications that have been chosen to avoid the risk of being able to identify individual businesses from the summary statistics.
#StHelena #Stats #2019BusinessSurvey
SHG
24 March 2020