A Year in review and a little peek forward

Hello everybody and welcome to our final update for the 2021 year.

Turn back the clock 12 months and I think this time last year we were all looking forward to a break over the Christmas period having just been through an extraordinary year of the Covid pandemic.

Fast forward 12 months and not much has changed, yet so much has changed.

The pandemic has continued to cause disruption to our daily lives. Whilst we haven’t had the lockdowns of the cities, in the border region we have had the inconvenience of different jurisdictions dealing with the same problem in different ways. It has meant in some cases our businesses have been damaged and our families separated. For those in those situations the year has been tough.

For others, life might have continued on relatively normally with the biggest hassle being the need to wear masks when shopping.

Government assistance

The various government assistance packages have now all but wound back. Without wishing to be political I think that the governments have done pretty well by business with these packages. They have been relatively easy to access and have generally hit the intended targets. It is clear that with the benefit of hindsight that without these packages the state of small business in our region would have been in a far worse position.

Whilst there is no doubt a long way to go before we ever return to normal we can rightfully go forward with confidence that the vaccines will do their job and that we will be as protected as any peoples in the world.

Things to celebrate

At Johnsons MME this year we have had a number of things to celebrate.

Our primary producer clients have generally fared well with last season’s crop being exceptional and this year’s looking very good (go away rain). This has also meant that the wider local economies benefited.

Machinery suppliers have had good years as our clients have taken advantage of taxation concessions around asset write-offs.

The building industry continues to perform strongly with both the residential and commercial sectors doing well.

When these key industries do well, our region generally also does well.

Some of our clients have been highlighted in our regular blogs during the year. If you wish to see what they are doing you can read up here.

Johnsons MME expands

From an internal prospective we were delighted to come to arrangement with the Chisholm Partners firm in Wangaratta for them to join us. This gives our firm an even stronger presence in the North East of Victoria.

For the existing Chisholm Partners clients we hope that the expanded service offerings that can now be provided “inhouse” will be of value to you. We welcome aboard Kristian and his team to Johnsons MME and we look forward to meeting with you all over the course of 2022.

Looking forward

Going forward we look forward to life returning to something closer to resembling normality. Whilst “zoom” meetings are good – face to face is where we enjoy being. We trust that we will be catching up with you all face to face in the new year.

As always, we wish you and your families a happy and relaxing Christmas and New Year period. We hope that you can recharge your batteries, have some fun and most importantly return safely in 2022.