It's Canberra's golden mile for hospitality, but traders on and around Lonsdale Street in Braddon have felt the strain of coronavirus restrictions in place long after the city was shut down.
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Grease Monkey owner Nick Tuckwell said he welcomed any government support while occupancy limits prevented his businesses reaching its pre-pandemic revenue levels.
"Canberra is in a really strong position for the rest of the year and we, as business owners, should be grateful that we do live in this city, and I guess remember there's people a lot worse off than us. So we are obviously grateful for any government support," Mr Tuckwell said.
The territory budget included extensions to schemes designed to lessen the impact of payroll taxes and cut food registration and liquor licensing fees for another year.
But an industry group said the budget should have targeted more initiatives at businesses in the territory.
Budget papers released on Tuesday said about 5000 ACT businesses were still receiving the JobKeeper payment in the first week of December.
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About 11,000 businesses were receiving the payment in July 2020 at the peak of the scheme, designed to supplement businesses' wage bills during the pandemic-induced economic downturn.
The JobKeeper scheme will end on March 28, but Grease Monkey has not qualified for the tail end of the scheme which needed businesses to show revenue had fallen by 30 per cent.
"30 per cent is a massive margin. If you're more than 30 per cent down, you're going broke anyway," Mr Tuckwell said.
"We don't qualify for anything, which is frustrating because we are definitely down on revenue."
Mr Tuckwell said cuts to food businesses registration and liquor licensing fees would also help hospitality businesses.
"Every cent you save can go straight to the bottom line, so that's definitely a positive step. And it is just one less expense we have to pay, so I am grateful for that," he said.
A new round of the Choose CBR voucher scheme would also be welcome if its processes can be smoothed out, but it may have less benefit for hospitality businesses who were already running at restricted capacity.
"We did find it was quite hard to navigate those with various different till systems, POS systems, and customers actually found it quite confusing as an overall scheme. However, if we can simplify the process, I'd be more than happy to keep using the voucher system," he said.
Canberra Business Chamber chief executive Graham Catt said he thought that the initiative should also have been extended towards small and micro-businesses as part of COVID recovery measures.
Mr Catt said the economic outlook which underpinned the budget was welcome and that the forecast had improved since last August, but many small businesses were still doing it tough in the recovery period.
"We would've liked to have seen more focus on initiatives that were targeted at supporting local businesses," he said.
with Andrew Brown
Jasper Lindell
Jasper Lindell joined The Canberra Times in 2018. He is a Legislative Assembly reporter, covering ACT politics and government. He also writes about development, transport, heritage, local history, literature and the arts, as well as contributing to the Times' Panorama magazine. He was previously a Sunday Canberra Times reporter.
Jasper Lindell joined The Canberra Times in 2018. He is a Legislative Assembly reporter, covering ACT politics and government. He also writes about development, transport, heritage, local history, literature and the arts, as well as contributing to the Times' Panorama magazine. He was previously a Sunday Canberra Times reporter.
