The business sector in Honduras has been greatly affected by the Covid-19 crisis. At the beginning of the crisis, in March 2020, the Government decided by decree that any company operating in non-essential services should close its doors and suspend workers until an improvement in the health situation. According to a survey by the Honduran Council of Private Enterprise (Consejo Hondureño de la Empresa Privada – COHEP) on business resilience to the crisis caused by Covid-19, and published in May 2020, 44% of companies temporarily or permanently closed their operations in April 2020 and the 26.9% sold their business.

The survey was conducted with a sample of 1,330 companies, most of which were micro and small enterprises.

41% of the companies that responded reported that they would not be able to survive until the end of July 2020 if they had not had the possibility to reopen their business.

As  consequence of the temporary or permanent closure, 29% of the formal employees were suspended or fired.

As of today, it is estimated that out of a total of 1.6 million employees in the private sector, between 400,000 and 500,000 jobs could be lost in the private and formal sector (about 30%), which corresponds to the growth in the formal employment achieved in the last 10 years. These newly unemployed workers are simply going to increase the number of workers in the informal sector. With this crisis, unemployment could reach 14% (from 5.7% in 2019).

COHEP has taken very serious measures to help companies emerge from this deep crisis. With the aforementioned survey, COHEP has negotiated with the Government urgent support measures for SMEs (fiscal and labour wise).

As a result of the survey, the Government established a “multisectoral roundtable for the gradual and progressive opening of economic and social sectors”. Members of the different business sectors, members of civil society and a scientific and academic committee, participated in this roundtable that defined specific guidelines for the reopening of businesses. There was no participation from the trade unions that proposed to focus a universal basic salary.

COHEP has managed to unify all member organizations to establish business criteria and measures for the reactivation of the economy. For them, COHEP created a series of working groups, which later involved the government, entrusted with the elaboration of measures to fiscally support companies, facilitate their access to financing, especially sectors such as SMEs and the construction and tourism industry.

The roundtable recommended that "the intelligent reopening of the economic and social activities be carried out gradually and progressively” (from 20% of workers to 60% in areas with less contagion). The reopening occurred in the month of July 2020.

The companies that wanted to open had to fulfil several obligations, including:

• Operating with safe-conduct
• Adapting their workplace according to the level of risk
• Serving as Triage centers for the identification of cases, having to be safe centres to work
• Periodically testing employees (10%) in medium and large companies
• Training employees on safety protocols
• Providing employees with personal protective equipment
• Providing transportation solutions to employees
• In the opening phase, complying with the safety protocols approved by the government
• Allowing inspections

National regulations (Executive Decrees approved by the Ministers' Council PCM 043-2020; PCM 045-2020; Labour Inspection Law, Mandatory Use of Mask Law) established the obligation for workers and companies to comply with the safety protocols and created an inter-institutional commission to verify compliance with them.

The sectors that wanted to reopen had to present safety protocols for approval by the Ministry of Labour and Social Security.

COHEP offered itself as an intermediary between all sectors of the economy and the Ministry of Labour, representing all companies - even those that were not members of the organization. To date, COHEP submitted to the Ministry of Labour more than 50 safety protocols. Based on this experience, COHEP, together with UNITEC university, and with the support of the Bureau for Employers' Activities of the International Labour Office (ILO ACT/EMP), developed a training course on occupational health and safety during Covid-19 pandemic that reached more than 2,000 participants and was used as a model training in other countries.