FORECAST OF EXPERTS: 9.7% OF RUSSIAN COMPANIES MAY BE LIQUIDATED BY 2021

The data on the monitoring of business in Russia, carried out in early February by Boris Titov's office, is disappointing. Almost every tenth of the interviewed owners and managers of Russian companies (5,000 respondents took part in the sample) reported that they were preparing to liquidate their business.

While the representatives of small and medium-sized businesses are asking for benefits for the payment of compulsory payments to the state, most point to a steady drop in demand as the main economic problem. It is the low demand that 60% of businessmen consider the main reason for negative forecasts for the development of the enterprises. In many cases, it remained at the level of last year's values.

This is most often due to the persistence of restrictions caused by the pandemic. They were reported by 53.8% of entrepreneurs.

The state of business is also influenced by difficulties with wage payments (25.3%), tax burden and rent payments (27.3%). In fact, every fourth respondent reports this. What is more, 22.3% of entrepreneurs point to a failure to pay for the delivery of goods or services rendered by customers. Slightly fewer complaints (19.7%) are related to the violation of the delivery time of goods and materials.

In general, as the researchers note, 33.1% of respondents reported a decrease in trade, and another 27.1% were in favor of stabilizing it at last year's level. Only 3.8% of entrepreneurs reported experiencing growth over 2019.

The monitoring carried out by the experts could be encouraging given that 19.1% of businessmen told researchers that their companies were recovering from losses incurred in 2020. However, the indicator of those who are planning to go to the courts with a claim for bankruptcy this year is also very high (10.9%). Experts say the reason for this is the moratorium introduced last year. It artificially slowed down the bankruptcy process, which could become widespread now.