- For our enterprises and those who have been financially impacted by this recent lockdown, it’s reassuring to receive the news today that all of New Zealand, south of the Auckland boundary, will move down to Alert Level 3 at 11.59pm on Tuesday 31 August. This will be welcome news for many of our enterprises, including construction and hospitality, who will be able operate again albeit in a restricted way under Alert Level 3 guidelines.

- While the change to a lower alert level is a positive step forward, we must ensure we don’t get complacent and that we continue to follow public health recommendations. It’s critical to adhere to the guidelines to remain safe and minimise community impact so we can continue to descend in alert levels as soon as we are able.

- Please continue to check places of interest and if you are feeling unwell isolate and call Healthline about a free Covid-19 test. By getting a test, you are helping keep our community safe. Getting our vaccinations as soon as possible must also be a top priority, to protect and minimise the risk to ourselves and our community and those who are most vulnerable.

- Venture Taranaki is here to support enterprises. We encourage enterprises to contact us via the Venture Taranaki website enquiry form. This gives us the information we need to help enterprises the most efficiently, effectively, and quickly.

- Business support for local enterprise can still be accessed directly through the Government for those who have been impacted financially by lockdown via Covid19.co.nz, including the Covid-19 Wage Subsidy Scheme, and the Covid-19 Resurgence Support Payment.

- Now that we are moving down levels next week, it’s never been more important that as the ability to spend becomes less restricted, we go local with our dollar where possible, as money spent local, stays local to support the people, community, and on a larger scale the vibrant, thriving community and like no other lifestyle we are fortunate enough to have here in Taranaki.

- I would encourage everyone to continue to champion the Go Local message and support local enterprises wherever you can. On the Venture Taranaki website, we have several Go Local assets that businesses can download and use across their digital channels and display at their physical premises. Please visit https://www.venture.org.nz/projects/go-local/go-local-downloadable-assets/ to access the assets.

- Today’s announcement is a step forward for us as we’ll soon start to open up some business trading, getting our economy moving like we did so well over a year ago after coming out of lockdown 2020.

-Taranaki as a region post lockdown 2020 was able to bounce back reasonably well, seeing a strong uplift in spend across almost all areas when compared to the same time the previous year, and we had managed to reach a point where we had actually offset the financial impact of Covid-19 with cumulative spend up 0.3% for the week ending 15 August as we moved into lockdown the following week.

- We also have strengths our region can draw on, in terms of some of our key sectors – energy and food production – having been able to operate as essential services.

-This is a positive indicator that we are able to recover from this lockdown too, and that if we commit to conscious locally spending, we can help our region go forward as positively as possible.

© Scoop Media