COVID-19 pandemic

Air New Zealand is about to dip into the government loan after reporting huge losses yesterday.

The carrier reported the biggest corporate loss in recent history and its first loss in 18 years - a deficit of $454m for the year ended June compared with the previous year's $276m profit.

Much of the loss centred on the costs associated with 4000 redundancies, asset writedowns and grounded planes. Stripped of these one-off costs, the underlying loss was $87m.

The carrier reported an after-tax loss of $454 million for the year ended June compared with the previous year's $276m profit.

Much of the loss was because of write downs in the value of planes, and restructuring costs as it cut costs and sacked about 4,000 staff, which altogether totalled $541m.

Stripping out one-off costs its underlying loss was $87m against $387m profit, as revenue fell 16 percent to $4.84 billion. The airline has received more than $100m in wage subsidies.

Samoa Victim Support Group President, Siliniu Lina Chang, highlighted this the issue in a press statement while receiving assistance from local communities. 

 “Stress and anxiety have led to escalating rates of domestic violence, and the United Nations research recording 68% of Samoans having lost income due to the pandemic, is a clear indication of what had mostly triggered violence nowadays; the loss of income”, Siliniu said.

At a news conference for Pacific media on Friday, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and the director-general of health, Ashley Bloomfield, paid tribute to the community for the way it had responded to the call to get tested.

"That's a 23.2 percentage of testing for Pacific people and of course New Zealand's Pacific population is less than half that," Ardern said.

That could be seen in the long queues that had formed at testing centres right across Auckland's south in the past week, with queues that had stretched for kilometres down roads.

The net profit for the year ended June fell to $193.9 million compared with $523.5m in the previous year, which included significant property value gains.

However, underlying earnings fell by nearly a third to $188.5m, as operations were severely curtailed from March when border restrictions were put into place and domestic travel all but dried up during the lockdown.

Chief executive Adrian Littlewood said the company had faced some of its most challenging conditions, which were set to continue for some time.

Leausa Dr Take Naseri held his first Covid press conference since March yesterday and spent the time highlighting the government's work to prevent the virus from entering the country.

His comments came after public concern that a 27-year-old seasonal worker, who had returned from overseas, had died of Covid-19.

The worker had spent 14 days in quarantine and had earlier tested negative for the coronavirus.

Leausa said a post mortem would be done soon but it was likely the man had suffered from heart issues.

He said people needed to be sensible.

The New Zealand arm of ANZ's net profit for the three months ended June has fallen by 10 percent or $40 million on the previous quarter to $351m.

It also put aside $79m to cover bad and doubtful debts, on top of the $233m it set aside for the first half of the year.

ANZ chief financial officer Stuart Taylor said the bank's performance had been solid given the economic blow dealt by the pandemic, but he expected bad debts to increase further before the end of its financial year.

The Pacific Pharmacists Association is a pharmaceutical workforce that aims to meet the health needs of Pacific people in accordance with their culture, custom and heritage.

Auckland is currently on alert level three, while the rest of New Zealand is on alert level two. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has said the settings would be reviewed on 21 August.

The world's third largest economy saw gross domestic product fall 7.8 percent in April-June from the previous quarter, or 27.8 percent on an annualised basis.

Japan was already struggling with low economic growth before the crisis.

The figures released today are a stark reminder of the severe financial impact faced by countries around the world.

Japan slipped into recession earlier this year following two successive quarters of economic contraction.

Fiji Rugby announced in April it was cutting costs in an attempt to manage the financial fallout from the coronavirus.

Conway Beg was appointed to the FRU Board late last month by the Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama, who is also President of the rugby union.

The pandemic was causing upheaval with sporting organisations all over the world and Fiji Rugby was no different.