Businesses and COVID-19 impact, liquidity issues and failure perceptions: The case of Albania

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze business liquidity perceptions during the Covid-19 lockdown and how the lockdown affected businesses. The research methodology used in this paper consists of a literature review on businesses in the lockdown and an analysis of data collected through a survey conducted in the second quarter of 2020, immediately after the Covid-19 restriction measures were imposed. The sample used contains 180 businesses from a population of 166,386 businesses in Albania, providing a 7.30% error according to the Raosoft calculator. A more in-depth analysis was made by comparison, using box-plots for liquidity issues and problems faced by small, medium and large businesses (SMLEs) during the pandemic. The degree of significance of factors taken into consideration in this study is expressed by Pearson’s Correlation Coefficient (PCC) and an econometric model. The processing and analysis of data was made using SPSS V21. From the analysis of the factors considered and the size of the business, two important conclusions emerge: (1) the exercise of activity for Albanian businesses is closely related to the payments and the business perspective (bankruptcy risk); (2) the fear of bankruptcy was felt more by big business, while medium business had fewer problems referring to all the factors taken into consideration. The econometric model determined the most important factors for assessing the level of impact of Covid-19: Failure Perception, Support from Solidarity Packages, and Cash Reserves Usage. Surprisingly, it is noticed that businesses attribute the use of cash reserves (C.R.U) to different expenses/liabilities compared to the traditional ones treated in this study.