13,848 Slovaks Went Bankrupt in 2018, Up 164.33 percent Y-o-y
Bratislava, January 3 (TASR) – Historically the highest number of Slovaks went bankrupt last year – as many as 13,848, with December also breaking records when 1,415 people in Slovakia went bankrupt in the last month of 2018, TASR learnt on Thursday.
An analysis conducted by CRIF – Slovak Credit Bureau, which manages credit registers of bank and non-bank institutions, shows that the number of personal bankruptcies in the previous year compared to 2017 with 5,239 personal bankruptcies increased by 164.33 percent. While in 2017, 437 personal bankruptcies were reported on average in one month, it was as many as 1,154 in the previous year.
“Our assumption of the number of personal bankruptcies exceeding 10,000 in 2018 has been confirmed. The main reason for their significant increase is the higher availability of personal bankruptcy as a way to get rid of debts enabled by a legislative change effective from March 1, 2017. So the reason is not that increasingly more people were getting into financial troubles from June 2017 when the effects of this change first appeared,” said the company’s chief analyst Jana Markova.
According to the analyst, these were debtors who had been unable to deal with their incapacity to pay debts in the past as they did not meet the legislative conditions. In view of the overall level of indebtedness of Slovak households as well as the pace of running into debts, which is the highest throughout the European Union, the number of personal bankruptcies is expected to be high also in 2019.
