The top concern for American businesses in China amid the coronavirus disease is the global travel disruptions.
With this, many businesses are cutting compensation and bonuses that could have gone to the intermediate staff as well as the senior executives, according to verifiable a report.
Over 90 per cent of the respondents confirmed that they were affected by such disruptions, up from 77 per cent last month, according to a monthly survey released Friday on the impact of COVID-19 by the American Chamber of Commerce in China.
Chamber chairman, Greg Gilligan, stated that thousands of workers and senior executives were currently stranded outside China.
“We will continue to work closely with the relevant government authorities in a bid to bring them back as soon as possible,” he said.
Sixty percent of companies said they were cutting costs. About half of respondents said they had or were considering cutting compensation for employees, with nearly 30 per cent saying they were cancelling or deferring salary increases this year.
Both U.S. and European business groups are lobbying China to allow foreign workers back into the country after it shut its borders late March to non-Chinese nationals to curb the spread of the virus.
China sees imported cases from abroad as a key threat to its epidemic control.
It has only relaxed rules to allow some business travel from South Korea and Germany. Beijing has also consulted with Japan about easing border controls.
Nearly 60 per cent of surveyed companies said they had resumed normal operations after nationwide lockdowns, although only a quarter of companies working in the resources or industrial sectors said this was the case. About half of manufacturers said their facilities are operating at normal capacity.
