A and R Enterprises Owner Considers Worst Case Scenario
According to Urbina Junior, A and R Enterprises has seven branches across the country. The company employs over two hundred persons. If the country goes in another lockdown, A and R will be forced send home more employees and possibly close one or two of its branches.
On the Phone: Rosendo Urbina Junior, Managing Director, A and R Enterprises
“Beside people not having the purchasing power that they had before being that many people are out of jobs, we were having difficulty purchasing back to school items because of the foreign exchange problem, the shortage that we have in the country at this present moment. In terms of activity, initially when we reopened in May business dropped like forty to fifty percent countrywide. Since then it has gone up slightly. We are probably are about seventy percent of what we used to sell. It depends on the region where are you. For example Dangriga is probably the worst hit and San Pedro. Our business really dropped a lot. The other branches it might be probably twenty-twenty five percent drop in sales over all. But we are making it up with grocery. We turned all the stores in to groceries.”
Hipolito Novelo
“Is that helping the company to keep afloat?”
On the Phone: Rosendo Urbina Junior
“Yes, actually if we hadn’t done that we would have probably still be around fifty percent down in our sales. Groceries accounts for about twenty-five to thirty percent of our gross sales right now countrywide. We do have commitments with the banks in terms of loans, overdraft faculties and things like that. We do have over two hundred employees countrywide which is a big payroll on a weekly basis. So if they do lock us down again basically we would be in problems.”
Hipolito Novelo
“And then that problem would trickle down to the two hundred plus employees who would be made redundant.”
On the Phone: Rosendo Urbina Junior
“We would probably have to put a plan to terminate workers on a case by case and even, a worst case scenario, close one or two stores to stay alive.”
