The Kamloops Chamber of Commerce has taken another survey among it’s members to see how they’re coping with the COVID-19 pandemic.

About 80 owners responded to the survey designed to take the pulse of Kamloops business, that’s less than usual according the the Chamber’s president.

65 percent of respondents said there is still a signifcant decline in sales volume which Tyson Andrykew says “is expected at this point”.

The pandemic has presented some unique challenges for businesses as Andrykew said while appearing on the NL Morning News. “We’re seeing a lot of interesting stats around operating costs so I think with different cleaning products or adding infrastructure like restaurants putting up Plexiglas booths and whatever else.”

“So, almost 40 percent are saying that they’ve increased their operating costs.”

“A lot of businesses are relying on the federal wage subsidy but those increased operating costs may catch up to us once that subsidy goes away if those cost are kind of on going. If they were just up up front costs, hopefully that won’t have a impact.”

As far as the low number of responses, Andrykew thinks perhaps some businesses have been picking up and may not have had time to fill out the survey.

He stressed the importance of doing them. “We’re continuing to encourage everyone to fill it out because without this information, we’re kind of flying blind and wind up making a lot of one on one calls to try and figure out what’s happening to businesses locally.”

There was something Andrykew was not expecting to see in the results, “Only about half of companies in Kamloops that answered the survey were receiving some sort of government support where as the average in the province is 65 percent, so it’s a unique one and we’d like to find out a little bit more as to why that is the case whether is it’s local businesses just didn’t qualify or didn’t apply or needed more information so we’re working on figuring that one out.”