Number of bankruptcies down drastically in October

The number of bankruptcies in Belgium fell in October for the fourth month in a row, to 870, or 17.85% fewer than the same month last year. The number of job losses as a result was down 10%.

Broken up by region, the number of bankruptcies in Flanders last month was down by 18%, and in Brussels by more than 8.5%. “Slowly but surely, we are measuring figures that are comparable to the situation prior to the financial crisis,” commented Eric Van den Broele of business intelligence bureau Graydon, which tracks the figures.

In the first 10 months of this year, meanwhile, the total number of bankruptcies was down by 6.58% in Flanders, compared to the same period in 2014, but the number increased in Brussels by nearly 6.8%. The number of job losses as a result of bankruptcies was down by more than 11.6% in Belgium as a whole, to 19,272 year-to-date.

A significant figure is the number of older established companies in the total. In 2008, companies set up before 1990 formed barely 7% of the total number of business failures; in 2015 the number had gone up to 13.8%.

Photo: Ingimage