There are currently 33,152 registered companies and approximately 122,000 self-employed persons doing retail business in the Czech Republic, the lowest number since 2016. This is according to the latest research from the consultancy firm Dun & Bradstreet. According to the report, the decline is mainly due to the fact that Czechs are cutting back on surplus products, and businesses are losing money as a result.
“Compared to the pre-pandemic period, the business base of joint-stock companies and limited liability companies operating in the retail sector has shrunk by 11 percent, and in the case of self-employed persons even by a third,” said Dun & Bradstreet analyst Petra Štěpánová.
A slight decline in the number of retail limited liability or public limited companies began to occur in 2017, but the decline accelerated significantly between 2020 and 2021, the report said. At that time, 7.8 per cent of them had declined, it said. “From 2021 onwards, only a slight decline in the number of retail companies can be observed. At the same time, from 2020 onwards, roughly half as many new firms are being created as in previous years,” Dun & Bradstreet reported.
Last year, according to the report, 1,209 companies with limited liability or joint-stock companies engaged in the retail business closed down, while the number of newly established ones was 645. So far this year, 192 companies have been eliminated and 57 have been added.
The largest number of self-employed persons running retail businesses in the Czech Republic was in 2020, according to the report. Then, between 2021 and 2022, a quarter of them quit, with the number falling from 172,000 to 130,000. In the long term, then, there are twice as many closed trades as newly registered trades, according to Dun & Bradstreet.
Last year, 8,718 self-employed retail businesses were closed, while 3,017 were created. So far this year, 9333 self-employed businesses have closed, while 564 have been created, the report said.
Retail sales in the Czech Republic fell for the tenth consecutive month in February on a year-on-year basis. But the decline slowed to 6.4 percent from January’s revised 6.8 percent. On a month-on-month basis, retailers had sales down 0.4 percent. The Czech Statistical Office (ČSÚ) reported today.
“Retail sales for 2022 fell by 3.6 percent and this trend continued in the first months of this year. The difficult period during the pandemic was replaced by the energy crisis and the subsequent spiral of inflation, which is reflected in a real decline in the incomes of most households, which are thus forced to save,” Štěpánová said.
Source: ČSÚ, Dun & Bradstreet and CTK
