As of: February 19, 2024, 6:00 p.m
By: Marcel Reich
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Based on 10,000 companies, there were a total of 4.5 company bankruptcies in Germany in November.
© Andreas Arnold/dpa
The number of insolvencies in Germany is rising rapidly.
Experts warn that the situation will worsen further.
Munich – Difficult conditions such as the economic downturn, high interest rates and expensive energy forced more German companies to go out of business at the beginning of the year.
The number of regular insolvencies filed rose by 26.2 percent in January compared to the same month last year, as the Federal Statistical Office announced on Friday.
In December 2023, the increase was 12.3 percent, less than half as high.
“Since June 2023, double-digit growth rates have been observed year-on-year,” it said.
Overall, the insolvency figures for this period remained slightly below the level of the pre-Corona period from June 2019 to January 2020.
The standard procedures are only included in the statistics after the first decision of the insolvency court; in many cases the actual time of the insolvency application is around three months beforehand.
“The poor economic situation is increasingly reflected in the development of insolvencies,” said SME expert at the German Chamber of Commerce and Industry (DIHK), Marc Evers.
“Unfortunately, a look at the coming months does not promise any improvement: more and more companies are reporting increasing bad debts.” According to a DIHK survey, 13 percent of all companies are currently affected by this.
In the healthcare industry (17 percent) and in transport (18 percent), a particularly large number of companies report that their customers are having payment difficulties.
Not only weak demand, but also high costs and uncertain economic policy conditions as well as bureaucracy are putting more and more companies in distress.
Claims worth billions
From January to November 2023, the number of company bankruptcies rose by 23.2 percent to 16,264 cases.
The local courts put the creditors' claims at around 1.5 billion euros for November alone.
“The insolvency situation remains dynamic and will only continue to develop in the direction of increasing numbers in the next few months,” said researcher Steffen Müller from the Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH).
In addition to the current difficult general conditions, the fact that Corona aid was more often paid to companies that were already unproductive before the crisis may also play a role.
This contributed to very low insolvency figures during the pandemic.
However, this aid now has to be repaid in a persistently difficult environment.
“It is not surprising that this is overwhelming many weaker companies,” said Müller.
Based on 10,000 companies, there were a total of 4.5 company bankruptcies in Germany in November.
Most were in the transport and storage sector with 9.6 cases.
This was followed by other economic services (such as temporary employment agencies) with 7.5 cases.
However, the number of consumer bankruptcies fell in November.
It decreased by 1.0 percent to 5811.
For January to November 2023, this results in an increase of 1.1 percent to 61,460 cases.
With material from Reuters