Over 600 bankruptcies between January and September 2014

Courts declared bankruptcies of 619 companies during the first nine months of 2014, a 9 percent drop compared to the corresponding period of 2013, according to preliminary data compiled by credit insurance firm Coface. Despite the decrease, the number is still twice as big as in 2008. The manufacturing and construction industries saw the largest decline in the number of bankruptcies, of 23 percent and 26 percent respectively. However, the number of service companies that went under during the first three quarters of 2014 is 20 percent higher than in the same period of 2013. “Financial results of companies, particularly those with significant exposure to exports, will be limited by the stemmed recovery in the euro area, including Poland’s main export destination – Germany, which recorded negative growth of 0.2 percent in Q2 2014,” said Grzegorz Sielewicz, chief economist at Coface. The sectors with high risk of bankruptcies in the coming months include food producers and distributors as well as transport companies, due to the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. The number of transport firms that wound up between January and September 2014 went up by 30 percent y/y.