Every fifth company (22%) is realistically afraid of closure or bankruptcy, according to a study by Keralla Research carried out for the BIG InfoMonitor Debtors Register. The arrears of companies towards suppliers and banks increased by PLN 715 million during the pandemic, and almost half of this amount fell at the beginning of this year.
Nearly 520 companies were affected by insolvency in Q1 this year, ie almost 120% more than in the same period last year. Of these, just over 350 bankruptcies were announced in the form of simplified proceedings, without the need to register in court. Poles also massively suspend the activities of companies. In the first three months, it affected 49 thousand. enterprises, i.e. 21% more than in Q1 2020 and over 100% more than in Q1 2019.
“It is estimated that if this trend continues, this year the number of suspended activities will reach a record and unprecedented level from 200 to even 250 thousand companies. Most often this problem will affect the broadly understood service industries” – said Tomasz Starzyk, Dun & Bradstreet expert.
The largest increase in bankruptcy in the first quarter of this year. was recorded in transport, where nearly 40 companies went bankrupt. The difficult situation is also confirmed by the representatives of this industry in the survey. The risk of bankruptcy is mentioned by over 40% of representatives of enterprises involved in the transport of people and goods, with the average response for all industries at the level of 22%. From the end of March last year to the end of February this year, the arrears of the transport industry towards suppliers and banks increased by 6.6% (PLN 137 million) to PLN 2.2 billion, and the number of unreliable companies by almost 0.5 thousand. to over 33.2 thousand At that time, among all companies, overdue liabilities increased by 2.2% (PLN 0.72 billion) to PLN 33.87 billion.
Construction companies also mention the possibility of bankruptcy more often than in general – 28%. Over the past 12 months, almost every fourth service company was also on the verge of bankruptcy. In trade and industry, the feeling of risk of bankruptcy was less frequent, it concerned 14% and 12% of enterprises, respectively.
However, a lot also depends on the size of the company and the number of clients, a higher risk of failure is signaled by smaller companies (28%). There is also a dependence on the number of contractors – the fewer a company has, the higher the probability of bankruptcy (31%), and it also grows when there are more than fifty contractors (28%). The statistics of reported bankruptcies in Q1 show that bankruptcies most often occur in micro, small and medium-sized enterprises. Nearly two-thirds of the recorded bankruptcies concerned companies that did not exceed the PLN 50 million revenue threshold in the last financial year and employed up to 100 employees.
Source: ISBnews
