Quinte News is continuing to look back at this past year.
The President of the Belleville and District Chamber of Commerce Jill Raycroft talked to us about the past 12 months.
She says they sent out 15,000 rapid tests over the last Christmas holiday and there was still a pandemic cloud this past January and February.
“Even our planning for our events was delayed because we weren’t one hundred percent sure what we were going to be allowed to do, was there going to another lockdown? Then you have the war in Ukraine and then you have all a sudden the supply chain issues that start to impact everything and the cost of everything.”
She says as we moved out of the pandemic at the beginning of the year, we moved into an inflationary problem.
“Money that you’d been saving up over the course of the pandemic because you couldn’t do anything, all of a sudden you could see all of that savings start to dwindle.”
She said it affected some consumerism in a way the experts were not predicting.
Raycroft says for those who still had money, they returned to the market in a big way, but there were many who couldn’t.
She says it was a strong return to normal for businesses that were able to pivot during the pandemic, as business operatations did change for many.
