Amid the war in Ukraine, Lithuanian firms are making crisis plans. Some, however, lack guidance, according to the country’s Business Federation, writes Lithuanian Radio and Television
“We have bought all the fertilisers, all the seeds, all the substrates. Everything we could buy for the year ahead, we did,” said Mindaugas Pupienis, director of a vegetable growing company, Kietaviškės Gausa. “We have diesel generators in case of an [power] outage.”
But not everything can be planned ahead.
“If hostilities were to take place, it would be a lottery” whether the work would continue, added Pupienis.
Other sectors, including the pharmacies, have already had crisis management experience during the Covid-19 pandemic.
According to the CEO of a major pharmacy chain in Lithuania, they would rely on lessons from the pandemic in face of a military threat.
“We would also need to mobilise our staff, take care of our supply chains and deal with patients’ anxiety,” said Rūta Bagdonavičienė, CEO of Gintarinė Vaistinė.
The pharmacy chain would not close even during a war.
“If a bomb was to fall on one pharmacy, […] another pharmacy would be open – around the corner [or several] streets away,” added Bagdonavičienė.
But while some are making contingency plans, some don’t know where to start.
“There is probably an expectation, as in the case of a pandemic when business is in a coma that the state will come to the rescue,” said Andrius Romanovskis, president of Lithuania’s Business Federation.
“There is an expectation of a common conversation, of working on a sectoral basis with state institutions,” he added.
The public sector and strategic companies have emergency plans, but sometimes even this may not be enough, according to Andrius Stasiukynas, director of the Institute of Public Administration at Mykolas Romeris University (MRU).
“There must be very clear algorithms and steps agreed between all parties on what to do in one scenario or another. One of the obstacles to public preparedness for reconstruction and crises, in general, is the lack of cooperation with the authorities,” he said.
