This article is a great overview of the work underway on Marlborough’s Economic recovery from COVID-19. I was lucky enough to be asked to be involved in this project and look forward to seeing how the work done supports the recovery efforts.
Mahi tahi. Teamwork. It’s the catchphrase behind The Economic Action Marlborough (TEAM) group’s four-stage plan to restore the region’s economy — a plan that kicked off last week with the first ‘recovery’ phase. Here’s how Marlborough’s “team of 50,000” will get back on its feet.
Tackling Marlborough’s economic comeback has been broken down into four phases — ‘recovery’ (phase one), ‘resilience’ (phase two), ‘return’ (phase three), and ‘reimagination’ (phase four). The first phase, which will run from May to July, looks to kick-start 60 projects or works needed for the region’s “survival”.
The second phase, set to run for between three and six months from September, will focus on maintaining cash flows and jobs after the Government’s wage subsidy scheme ended. A TEAM report released on Friday outlined how the council could help: by maintaining jobs; developing new job opportunities through training or new infrastructure projects; and redeploying workers not needed by their company into a similar role, like in the primary industries.
“Many businesses [would be] hunkering down to survive, some will exit, some will prosper — how do we help them?”.
TEAM hoped to see the region’s economy return to normal under the third stage, about a year after lockdown started, but said it would be an “uncertain time” without a vaccine or controls. This would be followed by the final ‘reimagination’ phase, which would look at how lessons learnt during the coronavirus recovery, like environmental benefits, could be integrated into a ‘new normal’. This phase would run over the next two to three years.
Read full article here.
Comments