Every ninth company's account is blocked - Good news?

Today, every ninth company in Serbia has liquidity problems. 39,602 debtors cannot fulfill their obligations. That is how many legal entities and entrepreneurs had their accounts blocked on the last day of August. Creditors are demanding 214 billion dinars from them, without accrued interest, as the data obtained from the National Bank of Serbia show. However, the number of companies operating "in the red zone" is smaller than last year.

For the sake of comparison, on August 31, 2020, 41,700 debtors had blocked accounts, out of which 27,510 were legal entities and 14,190 were entrepreneurs. An attempt was made to forcefully collect 235.9 billion dinars from them, without accrued interest.

Currently, 455,948 companies, entrepreneurs, associations and travel agencies are registered at the Business Registers Agency. That means that roughly 8.6% of them have blocked accounts.

Nebojsa Atanackovic, the honorary president of the Union of Employers of Serbia, says that he is pleasantly surprised and that this represents good news because a smaller number of blocked accounts shows that the economy is in good condition. In his opinion, this was due to liquidity loans of commercial banks, for which the state guaranteed EUR 2 billion, through a guarantee plan to aid the economy.

Ljubodrag Savic, professor at the Faculty of Economics, agrees that many companies survived thanks to measures taken by the Serbian government. The fact that many companies are working this year, unlike last year, when they were prevented from it by the pandemic and quarantine, has also contributed to the good result.

For every company whose account is continuously blocked for 30 days, there is a reason for bankruptcy. According to data from the National Bank of Serbia, on August 31, there were 2,127 legal entities and entrepreneurs who have been illiquid for up to a month; whereas there have been 5,478 companies with their accounts blocked between 180 and 360 days. These data indicate that all of these companies are candidates for some kind of recovery or sale through bankruptcy. The Agency for Licensing of Bankruptcy Trustees, from the beginning of the year up until now, has opened bankruptcy for 204 companies.

It is of interest that 15,565 legal entities and entrepreneurs had their accounts blocked for over three years.

Ljubodrag Savic notes that we should look up to Europe:

- In the West, bankruptcy is a common thing. There, the company goes bankrupt relatively quickly. Even the company's decision maker is interested in going bankrupt, if he does not see the possibility for normal business conduct, because he thinks that it is better to save what can be saved. Otherwise it will only incur bigger losses.

Narodna banka Srbije Beograd

Agencija za privredne registre

Unija poslodavaca Srbije

Ekonomski fakultet Beograd

Agencija za licenciranje stečajnih upravnika Beograd

Poreska uprava Srbije

Nebojsa Atanackovic

Ljubodrag Savic

liquidity

blokirani računi

blockage

liquidity loans

iliquidity

bankruptcy