Assessment of Corona Virus Pandemic practice on Micro and Small Enterprises: The Case of Arsi Zone Selected Towns.

Abstract

Outbreak of Corona pandemic is the critically challenges to sustain economic
growth generally in the world particularly in Ethiopia. Identifying practice
of Corona pandemic was help in making better decision and resource
allocation. This study aimed to investigate the practice of corona pandemic
outbreak on business activity of Small and micro enterprise in Arsi Zones
selected five towns which undertake relatively high business activity and
potentially vulnerable to Covid. Cross-sectional data collected from micro
and small enterprises owners or representative persons, information
regarding demand and supply side situation in the market by comparing
before and after outbreak of COVID -19 and its spillover effect to other
sectors. Multi stage sampling technique was employed. Initially Arsi Zone
purposively selected, next five towns hold largest number Small selected
enterprise and lastly randomly selected sampling unit from five Towns. For
this study cross-sectional research design and mixed research approach
employed and semi-structured questionnaire were the main data collection tools. The data will be analyzed through quantitative and qualitative
methods. Descriptive statistics employed to analyze the effect of COVID-19.
SPSS 25 Software package was used to run the analysis. Finding of the study
reveal that outbreak of corona pandemic reduce the availability of raw
material, working hour, sales, number of working day per week, revenue and
profitability small and micro enterprises. Among total enterprises (83%) are
currently facing problems associated with selling their products and services.
Most enterprises (79%) have withdrawn from their iqubmemberships
because they are unable to make due payments on time and regularly.
Government should have to take policy measurement such as tax relief,
subsidies, reduction of interest rate and technically support on managing
crises face by small and microenterprises during this pandemic