"The covid-19 came now, practically, to cut the few revenues that there were, this cut represents in the companies something between 60 and 75 percent and we also have more alarming news that we have associates to think certainly to close the doors", said this Thursday the president of AAEPM, Nuno Fernandes.
According to him, the current picture of the advertising sector "is dramatic", especially as this industry "will swell the army of employees that this country already has" and we see "dreams die this way".
Speaking about the impact of the new coronavirus on the sector and the actions of the first three months of 2020, Nuno Fernandes recalled that Angola has been in recession for the last five years and covid-19 "was just a violent punch in the stomach that companies that were already weakened ended up suffering".
The advertising business in the country, he recalled, was worth around 950 million dollars between 2012 and 2013, but since 2014, the beginning of the country's economic, financial and exchange crisis due to the fall in the price of oil, revenues "have fallen dramatically.
"Many companies have maintained their structures for a long time because they thought the crisis could be temporary, the fact that they have maintained that structure and experiencing a fall in revenues has worsened their own internal situation", he noted.
Then, he stressed, "this has unbalanced the companies that over these four and five years have seen their revenues decrease drastically".
With companies struggling to pay salaries in March and April, the president of AAEPM advocated support for companies providing services.
"We have to understand that companies are unable to pay salaries at the moment, companies started to be hit in March, in April many communication companies stopped operating practically normally, they will even increase some costs", he stressed.
In order to help companies in the sector, "many have mobilized their employees to their homes with Internet means and hiring", the state must create "mechanisms for service companies to survive by employing thousands of workers".
With regard to the State's economic relief measures, defined to assess the impact of covid-19 on companies in the productive sector and families, the manager stressed that for this sector there are only "deferral measures".
Last week, journalists, mainly from private bodies, expressed their confidence that the "critical situation" of the sector, aggravated by covid-19, with "difficulties to pay salaries", will be overcome, after meeting with the Minister of Media under the indication of the President.
Previously, the Union of Angolan Journalists and the Institute for the Media of Southern Africa (MISA) Angola had already expressed to Lusa the "gloomy picture" that the private sector of the media pointing to the "reduction of advertising to more than half" as the main factors.
Today, Nuno Fernandes expressed solidarity with private media companies, considering that possible support should also be channelled to advertising agencies, with the production of institutional advertising to be disseminated in the media.
"If the state uses these companies to build this institutional communication, it will then be broadcast in the media - and all this, with the state as a major promoter of the activity, would play a very important role in the survival of the advertising sector and the media", he said.
