The number of bankruptcies surged in the first half of the year
The number of bankruptcies in the Netherlands surged in the first half of the year, reports failissementsdossier.nl. More companies are failing, especially in the service, retail and industrial sectors, according to bankruptcy-focused websites. These events are associated with inflation. As a result, businesses are spending more money on things like energy and product purchases, and it’s just not possible to recover all of these costs through their customers.
Between January and June, failuressementsdossier.nl counted a total of 1,636 companies and institutions in bankruptcy. The number was 1,006 in the same period last year, an increase of more than 60%. The number of bankruptcies nearly doubled last month.
Earlier, the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) also said few companies had gone bankrupt during the coronavirus pandemic, but the number of bankruptcies was on the rise again. But despite the increase, bankruptcies are still below pre-pandemic levels, according to CBS’s latest May figures. CBS won’t release June numbers until next week.
Robert Jan Blom of BankruptcyDossier.nl explained that the coronavirus boom has allowed many companies to survive for a long time. But for some companies, it was just a “stay-at-home”, he said. “These are companies that would otherwise have gone bankrupt simply because they were badly run. The aid provided them with a safety net. That’s been a particularly hard hit,” argued the expert.
Jacco Vonhof, chairman of MKB-Nederland, had already expressed his concerns about the future of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the Netherlands at a conference of business associations last month. He said the wave of bankruptcies predicted by experts wasn’t far away, and expressed concern about union demands for high wages and a shortage of workers.
https://nltimes.nl/2023/07/09/number-bankruptcies-rose-sharply-first-half-year The number of bankruptcies surged in the first half of the year