ECONOMY

Fewer firms are shutting down

Fewer enterprises shut down in the first half of 2014 compared with the same period in the previous two years, but there was also a drop in the number of new businesses, according to data from the General Commercial Register (GEMI).

New companies in the year to end-June amounted to 17,726, down 21 percent from 2013 and 22 percent less than 2012, while 14,020 enterprises shut down from January to June – down 10 percent from last year and 11 percent less than 2012.

The reduced business activity means that most companies that would not survive the crisis have already closed, while financing new enterprises remains very hard given the difficulty in gaining access to bank funding and the fact that potential entrepreneurs and even their relatives have run out of savings, which discourages so-called necessity entrepreneurship.

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