A grim report on business bankruptcies in Portugal has shown that in more than 80% of cases, creditors are left carrying the can.
According to figures from the Direção-Geral de Política da Justiça (Justice policies board) “the level of recovery, in other words, the proportion of credits paid in the face of credits owing stands at 17.6%”.
The entity stresses that “the remaining 82.4% did not correspond to “an effective payment” of any kind.
In fact, only 52% of cases for the last three months of 2015 “show any kind of payment of credits”.
Looking for ‘good news’ among these figures is hard.
As national tabloid Correio da Manhã explains, business bankruptcies are “six times higher than they were eight years ago”.
The only glimmer of light is in the bankruptcies of individuals. These have fallen since the same period in 2014, says the paper.
But the bottom line is that even though the economy has “shown signs of improvement”, the number of cases over insolvencies and business bankruptcies “is still high” and creditors are unlikely to recover their money in full.
