4.5 MILLION COMPANIES WERE CLOSED DOWN IN RUSSIA IN 2020

Human Rights Commissioner Tatyana Moskalkova released information on the number of entrepreneurs, small and medium-sized businesses that went bankrupt during the pandemic. According to her, 4.5 million companies and individual entrepreneurs were closed or went bankrupt.

A number of experts noted that the data presented greatly differ from the information released by the Federal Tax Service. According to the statistics of tax authorities, from March to October 437,638 entrepreneurs and farm enterprises, as well as 357,602 legal entities, including large companies, ceased operations.

The data of the tax service does not exceed 800 thousand objects, which closed before November 1.

Fedresource website’s statistics show that in the first nine months of 2020, a little more than 77 thousand people were declared bankrupt by the courts, including both entrepreneurs and ordinary citizens. Thus, there is a more than fivefold difference in the data. The press service of Moskalkova tried to explain that the source of the information she voiced was the business ombudsman Boris Titov.

Other experts, commenting on the scale of bankruptcies, cite alarming figures. For example, the head of the United Credit Bureau, Artur Aleksandrovich, calls 2.9 million citizens of the country potential bankrupts. They can officially receive the status of insolvent in an out-of-court procedure. According to Aleksandrovich, the total debt of such citizens exceeds 595 billion rubles. Along with this, each of them has individual debts in the amount of 50 to 500 thousand with a delay of more than 90 days.

If we add another 1.12 million debtors with a total debt of 1.5 trillion to the figure, announced by the expert, and the fact that they are planning to file a claim for their own bankruptcy in commercial courts, then the total number of inevitable bankruptcies will approach the figure that Moskalkova called.

At the same time, the artificial underreporting of statistics may also be associated with the moratorium, which was extended by the authorities from October to the New Year.

It is known that the head of the Accounts Chamber of Russia Alexei Kudrin spoke about the threat of closing a third of small and medium-sized enterprises in November. He suggested that the state had to support business during the second wave of the spread of infection in Russia even more than during the first one. Boris Titov also made proposals on the introduction of new measures to support business from the executive branch.