Bankruptcies soar 64.5% in August

The number of bankruptcies in Portugal shot up by 64.5% in August with 199 companies going under, 78 more than for the same month last year.

Yet the construction and public works sector was the only area of the Portuguese economy that saw a reduction at 4.4% in the number of insolvencies on 2019.
According to the monthly report from Iberinform da Crédito y Caución, the running tally for the year so far sees an increase of 10% in the number of insolvencies, with a total of 3,342, 319 more than in the same period last year.
The districts of Lisbon and Porto are the two that represented the greatest number of bankruptcies: 836 and 697 respectively. Compared with 2019, there was an increase of 13.1% in Lisbon and 9.3% in Porto.
The year-on-year figures in other districts were most significant in Angra do Heroísmo (Azores)(+50%), Castelo Branco (+50%), Faro (+43.2%), Viana do Castelo (+39.5%), Évora (+29.6%), Beja (+29.4%9, Ponta Delgada (+27.8%), Madeira (+25.4%) and Santarém (+14.7%).
Some districts, however, saw a fall in bankruptcies on 2019 (Guarda (-25%), Vila Real (-20%), Coimbra (-19.8%) and Viseu (-1.4%).
The industry and commerce sectors worst affected were Telecoms (+66%), Hotels and Restaurants (+29.2%), Other Services (+20.5%), Electricity, Gas and Water (+16.7%), Wholesale (+15.7%) and Vehicle Sales (+12.5%).
Regarding the creation of companies, August saw a fall of 10.2%, falling from 2,920 in 2019 to 2,621 in 2020, down 299 on the same period in 2019. In the annual accumulated total there was a 29.9% fall in the registration of new companies.