News of 51 job losses at Dunedin Railways came just days after fellow DCHL company Dunedin Venues Management Ltd announced it was cutting 16 of its 32 staff.
DCHL, a Dunedin City Council-owned investment company, oversees eight companies including Dunedin Airport, Aurora Energy, Delta and City Forests Ltd.
It had already been forecasting losses for the 2020 and 2021 financial years, with an eye to returning to profitability in 2022, as a result of significant reinvestment projects.
DCHL chairman Keith Cooper said like everyone else, companies were playing a waiting game.
"Most of them are in a vacuum of not knowing what’s around the corner," he said.
Speaking before yesterday’s alert level announcement, Mr Cooper said if Level 3 was introduced, City Forests Ltd would be able to get back to work.
But the outlook for other companies was much more unclear.
In its half-year results, released in December, DCHL said it was on track to pay $5.9 million within the financial year to the council by way of interest.
Mr Cooper said to date, that still looked likely to be achieved. But there was a caveat, he said.
"If we can’t get back to forestry and some of those other companies can’t start to operate, then that challenges that figure."
As for Dunedin Airport, it was ‘‘very difficult’’ to forecast what its business would be.
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Both the airport and forestry will have to shrink massively. Who is going to travel in the near future? Will China/Korea buy our logs when their economies are having a severe recessions and manufacturing collapse? The sooner we face reality DCC the better. Reduce our rates in line with the shrinking of the economy in the south. We do not need all the non-essential services the DCC promotes. If people want something, let the users pay for it. Shrink all local government to the essentials.
Councils bybyheir very nature take years to plan and activate... you want it all to stop in a day. It dose not work like that. Wake up and sort through the details mate......
The first thing that needs to shrink is the DCC. We're paying for too many councillors making too many bad decisions that are costing us dearly.
Halve the DCC!
The problem with the abo e commenters is that they do not understand economics.
Slash the DCC spending and it comes back to bite the locals in the ass and as sure as hell they would complain about that.
What do they want?? Action. When do they want it now. Coun is do not work like that, these things take time..
Do you realise that Lee Vandervis, the defender of everything... has cost the DCC $100k plus in his 'whistleblowing' actions with ZERO results.
Wake up mate it's the doom and gloom councilor that takes his coin in one hand and costs the council close to double that with his BS games who US the real issue here.