EXPERTS: THE STATISTICS ON BANKRUPTCIES ARE UNDERREPORTED

A research conducted by the experts from the Seldon Company showed that the official statistics of the number of individual entrepreneurs' bankruptcies, which were reported by the experts from the Federal Tax Service and Fedresurs, are significantly underestimated. It became clear the use of BIG DATA analysis technologies, as well as a large-scale increase in the total number of bankruptcies.

The number of bankruptcies in the first eight months of 2020 increased by 62% - it is estimated at 64,000 citizens. However, the FTS data speaks of 199 applications from individual entrepreneurs in the first six months, and in 2019 their number was even higher (274 entrepreneurs).

It means that one could draw conclusions about a noticeable improvement of the situation in private business from the statistics of tax authorities.

A similar situation is described by the data of "Fedresurs", according to which 874 individual entrepreneurs went bankrupt during the period from January to August, which is noticeably less than (by 8.6%) in the same period last year. And this is despite the pandemic and a noticeable deterioration of the economic situation in the country, which many experts talk about.

The reason for such a discrepancy in statistics, as the researchers from Seldon note, was behavioral factors. In fact, not 874, but 15,000 individual entrepreneurs filed for bankruptcy. However, they did it not as representatives of business, but as ordinary citizens (individuals), who could not pay off their debts.

Before the start of the bankruptcy proceedings, individual entrepreneurs simply liquidated their business, and then went through the procedure for obtaining bankruptcy status in a simplified manner (such an opportunity has appeared in legislation and legal practice since 2015).

As a result, despite the April decline associated with restrictions on the work of judges, the level of the bankruptcy cases broke the records of the previous years by September.

The in-depth analysis carried out by Seldon analysts allows us to look at the problems of micro-business and the activities of small businesses during a pandemic in a new way. Being left without insurance financial mechanisms, the entrepreneurs were left without revenue and preferred to stop the business activities and then turn to bankruptcy, but in the category of individuals. This is confirmed by data on the market segments (wholesale and retail trade), which accounted for the maximum number of bankruptcies.

It turned out that the official statistics of individual entrepreneurs' bankruptcies were distorted by almost 20 times. As a rule, only those businessmen, whose insolvency proceedings were initiated by creditors, got into it. At the same time, according to experts' forecasts, by the end of 2020, their number may increase by another 7,000, amounting to 22,000 bankrupt entrepreneurs in the country.