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9 EDITORIAL BusinessToday is published every Thursday. The newspaper is a MediaToday publication and is distributed to all leading stationers, business and financial institutions and banks. MANAGING EDITOR: SAVIOUR BALZAN EDITOR: PAUL COCKS BusinessToday, MediaToday, Vjal ir-Rihan, San Gwann SGN9016, Malta Newsroom email: bt@mediatoday.com.mt Advertising: afarrugia@mediatoday.com.mt Telephone: 00356 21 382741 T his is the period when most com- panies start closing their books for the year and making key decisions for the forthcoming period. The financial picture for most busi- nesses in 2020 is nothing to write home about. Turnover dropped, mar- kets dried up, customers stayed put, restrictions increased costs and Mal- ta's major export market – tourism – vanished. Business models and consumer be- haviour patterns were disrupted and it is very unlikely they will return to what they were before the coronavirus pan- demic struck. It is inevitable that come the New Year we will see a number of business- es that will buckle under the stress caused by COVID-19 and shutter up. The wage support scheme intro- duced by government earlier this year helped mitigate wage costs for many companies, enabling them to survive and keep their employees on board. Government has pledged to keep the scheme until March, even if it is ex- pected to change in January. Wage support was possibly the single most important measure that enabled businesses to survive the sudden im- pact of the pandemic. But going into the New Year, the commercial community has to look at much more than simple survival. Some companies have already start- ed doing so. The conference organised by the Chamber of SME's yesterday brought to the fore a handful of small business owners who re-modelled their offerings, diversified their ser- vices and ventured into new fields that were previously off their radar. The COVID setback pushed these business owners to discover new opportunities. It is this will to change and adapt to a radically altered environment that will determine which businesses will sur- vive in 2021. The government wage support will help to mitigate costs and it remains imperative that this is not stopped suddenly. But on its own it will not be enough. Malta Enteprise CEO Kurt Farrugia even suggested at the same conference that businesses that saw no hope of survival beyond three or six months could lose support unless they pre- sented viable plans for change. Farrugia's observation is very valid and pertinent because even if a COV- ID-19 vaccine becomes available in the first months of 2021, there is no cer- tainty that things will automatically and quickly return back to the same position they were before the pandem- ic. A business that is unsure whether its model will survive in this altered sce- nario will either close shop or have to radically re-invent itself. The most obvious would be to shift operations to online platforms but this not the only opportunity. We have seen companies involved in tourism using their employees' skills sets to venture into cleaning, maintenance and call centre operations. We have seen trans- port companies teaming up with re- tailers and diversify into deliveries. Spotting the opportunities may not always be obvious and straightfor- ward. This is why Malta Enterprise must continue offering expert guid- ance and schemes to help businesses understand the options and invest in change. COVID-19 has shocked the system and getting back to normal will not be a straight line. Indeed, it is very likely to be a different kind of normal where hand sanitisers at every shop door will become selling points, where facemasks at deli counters will serve as an attraction for customers seek- ing cleanliness, where people will use plastic money more than cash, where online shopping and deliveries re- quested through mobile phone apps will become staple consumer behav- iour, where regular vaccinations will become requisites for overseas travel. Businesses have to understand this different normal, adapt to it and cap- italise on the opportunities it can offer. Understanding and capitalising on the different normal 19.11.2020

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