He wants Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to announce an August election immediately to break the logjam of inactivity and get the retail and service sectors moving again.

Mr Blyth said there was an alarming ''disconnect'' between what the chamber was seeing every day and a weekend CommSec report listing Canberra as Australia's second-strongest economy, up from third place last month.

Rene Sedlmaier, managing director of Fyshwick communications company Sedcom, which has had to retrench two of its six staff since Easter, agrees. His first reaction to news reports proclaiming a ''strong outlook for the ACT economy'' was ''that would be nice but it is not what I am seeing from here''.

Mr Blyth has called a Business Crisis Summit for August 14 so business people such as Mr Sedlmaier can share their experiences. He wants to collect evidence to persuade the ACT government to do more for the private sector.

''There is a tendency in Canberra to assume every job is a public sector job,'' he said. ''That is not true and hundreds of private sector jobs have been lost since January. It will be tragic if this is allowed to escalate to the point where it is thousands, not hundreds.

''The ACT government invests $41 million in tourism compared to just $10 million in business and industry development. It is not good enough. We need to stop rolling out the red tape for business and find some red carpet instead.''

Mr Sedlmaier doesn't care who wins the election and believes other business owners feel the same way. ''We just want the certainty of knowing what the playing field will be so we can get on with the job of growing our enterprises again,'' he said. ''I quite admire Julia Gillard, I felt she achieved some good things with policy and that this will be acknowledged in years to come. The one thing on which she is likely to be judged badly is calling the election so early.''

Sedcom was established in Fyshwick in 1991 by Mr Sedlmaier's father, Helmut, who still works there.

Rene Sedlmaier said staffing had peaked at 12 in 2006 when the firm had other contracts in addition to the current business model. A keen student of technological trends, he foresaw the current convergence of communications and IT technology some years ago and repositioned the business accordingly.

''I win 85 per cent of the jobs we quote for,'' he said. ''This is a small town; you won't survive in a small town if you sell crap.''

While there had been a case for the staff reductions before last Christmas he had held off as long as possible.

''I had a hope, unfulfilled as it turned out, that conditions would improve in the new year,'' he said. ''Canberra was already slowing down. When the election was called the effect was dramatic. I know what growth in Canberra looks like and I am seeing nothing like it at the moment.

''I keep seasonal figures; the two months before and the one month after the ACT election were really quiet and then things picked up. We are seeing the same thing here. Since January everyone wants it [the election] over and done with. Overall our business would be down about 20 per cent on 2012 for the year to date.''

The other reason, and one Mr Blyth said many business owners would sympathise with, was that retrenching staff was neither pleasant nor easy.

''Small business is about people, you want to keep the people,'' Mr Sedlmaier said.''[But] you get to a point where you have to act to keep the other people in the business''