Challenges in micro and small food enterprises during the COVID-19 pandemic in Ecuador

Clara Orellana-Rojas, Carolina Chávez-Campuzano, Andrea Herrera-Cervantes, Yndira Guevara, Yereth Romero, Mariana Moyano, Rafael Rentería-Ramos, Mario Chong

Research output: Contribution to journalArticle in a journalpeer-review

3 Scopus citations

Abstract

Micro and small enterprises (MSEs) play a significant role in developing countries such as Ecuador. The food and beverage industry is essential for Ecuador’s economy, contributing approximately 5% to its GDP. Focusing on the impact of COVID-19 on the industry, this mixed research takes a qualitative and quantitative approach involving four stages: foundation, prefield, field, and reporting. The fieldwork was carried out when Ecuador’s economy reopened in September 2020, which saw demand increase gradually, production capacity recovering, mobility return to normal levels, and curfew restrictions reduced. As far as biosecurity protocols were concerned, communities were allowed to resume pre-pandemic activities, provided they complied with social distancing, permanent mask wearing, and strict cleaning procedures. The effect on each company’s process depends on the activities they adopted to mitigate the risk of the COVID-19 pandemic risk, e.g., service companies experienced, on average, a 22% cost increase due to the purchase of cleaning supplies, while manufacturing companies were more likely to have related measures in place and so the effect on them was on a comparatively smaller scale
Original languageEnglish
Number of pages19
JournalSustainability
Volume14
Issue number15
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Aug 2022

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 by the authors.

Keywords

  • Resilience
  • Micro and small firms
  • Process improvement
  • Operations
  • Productivity

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