The CEO of the Restaurant Association of New Zealand, Marisa Bidois has expressed mixed initial reaction to the 2020 Budget announced today by the Minister of Finance, Grant Robertson.
“We’re pleased to see that the government has listened to our calls for an extension to the wage subsidy,” said Bidois.
“This will be hugely welcomed by hospitality businesses where many are only just getting back into their businesses and are not trading any where near normal capacity. It will be a welcome relief, under very challenging circumstances.
“However, we we’re disappointed that there was not a lot of focus on business support. We would have liked to see working capital grants of around $25,000 provided to small and medium businesses or assistance specifically for lease costs as we have been calling for both.
“We will be looking forward to hearing more about the Tourism Recovery fund and how this impacts our industry.
“We’re also very interested to learn more about the investment in trade and apprenticeship.
The association has developed an apprenticeship programme that is ready and waiting to roll out which will help hospitality businesses build capability as well as attract and nurture new talent into the industry.
“We also thought it was good to see grants for online tech development for small businesses and also trial digital platforms to enable other novel solutions to connect food with consumers.”
For more information about the 2020 budget, visit https://treasury.govt.nz/publications/budgets/budget-2020
