43% of restaurants and bars facing bankruptcy

Around 43% of restaurants and bars and 17% of local accommodation guest houses are considering filing for bankruptcy.

These were the latest sobering figures from the monthly survey carried out by the Portuguese Hotel, Restaurant and Hospitality Association (AHRESP) released on Tuesday.
“In the food and beverages sector, 43% of companies are considering applying for insolvency given that the overwhelming majority say they cannot support their current overheads on staff, rent, utility bills, suppliers and other expenses from August onwards.”
In the AHRESP’s previous survey taken in July, the number of companies in the sector intending to declare insolvency stood at 38%.
The association stresses that 75% of all sector companies have recorded losses of 40% or over in their July turnover.
More than 16% of companies in the sector did not pay their July salaries and 14% of them paid their salaries partially.
The AHRESP revealed that 30% of companies stated the they could not maintain all of their employees until the end of the year, and that 16% of them had fired workers since the start of the State of Emergency on 17 March because of the pandemic.
In terms of bed and breakfast establishments, around 17% of companies surveyed stated they would file for bankruptcy if they couldn’t support their overheads since around 47% of guest houses had occupation rates of around only 10%.
In July, 27% of companies had no take-up, while 20% only had take-up up to 10%. In the July survey, 18% of bed and breakfast companies said they were considering filing for bankruptcy.