Coronavirus: China’s small firms see revenues tumble 70 per cent in March, survey shows

Study finds small and medium-sized businesses lost nearly 70 per cent of their income in March due to the coronavirus outbreak

Hotels, restaurants and education firms were the hardest by pandemic, Tsinghua University says

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Revenues for small, medium-sized and micro firms at the end of March were 69.5 per cent below the same period last year. Photo: AP

Published: 9:30pm, 14 Apr 2020Updated: 9:54pm, 14 Apr 2020

China’s small and medium-sized firms saw their income plunge nearly 70 per cent in March from a year earlier, with firms in the hospitality and education sectors struggling the most to recover from the coronavirus, a study released on Tuesday showed.

The results paint a bleak picture of the state of the world’s second biggest economy, which was hammered by the pandemic in the first two months of the year and is all but certain to record a first quarter contraction.

Revenues for small, medium-sized and micro firms at the end of last month were 69.5 per cent below the same period a year earlier, according to the study by Tsinghua University’s PBC School of Finance.

And although the university’s national “business recovery index” improved to 41.1 per cent in March from 33.3 per cent in February, it still indicated earnings were far from normal levels.

The recovery ratio, which measured revenues in March versus the same period a year earlier, was only 11.8 per cent for the education sector.