Company closures, insolvencies rise 16.8% in first two months of 2021
Due to the pandemic, company closures and insolvencies rose 16.8% in the first two months of 2021 compared to the same period last year.
Company closures and insolvencies rose 16.8% in the first two months of the year compared to the same period in 2020, with 3,135 companies closed, an Informa D&B barometer revealed Thursday.
“In 2020 the figures for closures were below those of 2019, but in the first two months of this year the monthly average of closures is back in line with what happened in 2018 and 2019, a period still before the onset of the pandemic,” Informa D&B pointed out.
The company points out that the number of closures and insolvencies should be “understood in light of the support measures that the Portuguese State has made available to companies.”
It should also be taken into consideration that these are normally lengthy processes and, in the case of insolvencies, involve the courts, whose activity was affected during the pandemic.
In an analysis since the beginning of the pandemic, company insolvencies registered a “slight increase” of 8% (84 more cases), “only in the sectors most exposed to the impacts” of the health crisis.
The opening of new companies fell 35.2 percent in the first two months of the year, in year-on-year terms, totalling 6,220, a decrease “strongly conditioned by the restrictive measures to combat the pandemic,” Informa D&B revealed today.
The same barometer concluded that the opening of new companies fell 35.2% in the first two months of the year, in year-on-year terms, totalling 6,220, a decrease “strongly conditioned by the restrictive measures to combat the pandemic.
The data shows that the decline in January and February was concentrated in five of the most relevant sectors in the Portuguese business fabric: services, transport, accommodation and catering, construction and business services.
However, the restrictions under the pandemic were also an opportunity for new businesses in certain sectors, as is the case of ‘online’ retailing, which, this year, has already seen the birth of nearly 100 new companies, which corresponds to an increase of 50% compared to 2020.
New companies in auxiliary activities of land transport (67%) and postal or courier activities (84%) also grew.
