Portugal has EU’s third largest increase in new businesses in Q3

The declarations of bankruptcies in the European Union (EU) rose 16.3% in the third quarter of 2022 compared to the previous quarter, according to data published by Eurostat this Thursday. As for Portugal, it saw a 2.9% drop in declarations of bankruptcies while reporting the third highest increase in registrations of new businesses (+6.8%).

This is the fifth consecutive quarter in which an increase in bankruptcies was observed, after the 9.6% fall in the second quarter of 2021. The European statistics office stated the increase was even more significant in the Eurozone (19.3%).

Only the transport sector escaped this increase, recording a 5.4% decrease in bankruptcies in the third quarter. Accommodation and food services (+24.0%), financial and insurance activities (+17.8%) and industry (+16.2%) had the highest rises.

Among the member states, Romania was the country where insolvency cases declined the most, with a decrease of 36.1%, followed by Cyprus (-32.7%) and Estonia (-21.3%). It is important to note that in 11 of the 16 member states with available data, the number of bankruptcies decreased. Conversely, the highest increase was in Hungary (+110.6%), followed by Spain (+66.1%) and Lithuania (+4%).

At the same time, the registration of new businesses in the EU bloc increased by 2.6% in the third quarter of this year compared to the previous three months, after a slight retreat in the first two quarters. Incidentally, the number of new companies in the first nine months exceeded the number of registrations in 2019, before the pandemic.