The Namibia Statistics Agency (NSA) has embarked on Round 2 of a survey to measure the prevalence and nature of adverse effects from Covid-19, experienced by selected businesses operating in Namibia during stage 2 and stage 3 of the virus lockdown during May to June 2020. 
This second round survey on the perception of businesses started on 28 July and will last until 7 August 2020 and is done to have an indication of the effect of the coronavirus pandemic on selected sectors of the economy. The survey will only cover the formal businesses selected from the database of the NSA.  A sample list of 502 businesses across 16 sectors of the economy will be used for this survey. The NSA maintains a list of businesses selected based on their importance in terms of revenue and output contributions to the economy. This survey list contains contact details such as telephone numbers and emails for companies. The NSA notes that in the absence of a Statistical Business Register (SBR), it is the only list available for the survey. 

The survey will use a mixed-method approach to online and telephone interviews. The link to the questionnaire will be sent to businesses via email addresses to fill in the online questionnaire. Furthermore, those without emails will be enumerated through telephone.  Follow-up of the online questionnaire will be done with telephone calls. Edit and validation rules will be built into the questionnaire to ensure that responses from respondents are consistent. Also, enumerators will be trained on how to administer and explain the questionnaire through the telephone and will be supervised by Senior Statisticians.  The previous survey results released on 26 May 2020 indicate that in general, half of the businesses continued to trade partially. This is followed by 25.2% of businesses that indicated they have temporarily closed while 21.2% of the businesses cited operating at full capacity during the survey period. Only 3.5% of the businesses cited that they were permanently closed. In the category of businesses that indicated to trade at full capacity, the ‘Manufacturing ‘sector accounted for 5.8% of the total businesses. On the other hand, the highest percent (5.3%) of businesses that were temporarily closed were recorded in the ‘Hotels and restaurants’ sector followed by the Real estate sector (3.5%).