LONDON: Two years after Britain’s exit from the European Union (EU), executives of UK companies are reeling from the effects of Brexit, including some who favoured to cut ties with Brussels.
The chief executive of a tiny chemicals company Robinson Brothers, Adrian Hanrahan said that Brexit has cast him only cost with no benefit. His company is based in London which for which the EU is still a big market.
The custom duties is not a problem, largely ended by the post-Brexit free trade deal between London and Brussels, but rather a huge new regulatory paperwork.
Hanrahan told AFP that the company has added nearly 25% extra on its administration costs just to deal with the changing paperwork of getting goods from the EU and out of the Block.
The company has 265 employees, producing chemicals used by different sectors featuring electronics, pharmaceuticals, food and other firms.
It exports nearly 70% of its products, of which more than half goes to the European Union.
Businesses find hard to adapt
Shevaun Haviland, British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) Director General, has said in a statement on Wednesday that 56% of UK businesses are facing problems in adapting to new trading rules.
He said that the companies feel helpless as nothing had been done to support them. If the problems were not timely addressed, the more EU businessmen will go elsewhere that would be very damaging.
The British government has said that it believed the national economy had entered a recession in the result of sky-high inflation.
Although Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is repeatedly blamed for the sored inflation and troubled economy, analysts claim that Brexit has also damaged the UK economy.
Nikhil Datta, a researcher at the London School of Economics, told AFP that there was enough evidence that the Sterling’s depreciation immediately followed the vote for Brexit in 2016. –AFP/APP
