Source: The Patriot Light | AWK Network | VIEW ORIGINAL POST ==>
Business failures have hit a post-pandemic peak, matching the rate measured in October 2020, with food and beverage the worst affected.
Australian businesses are failing at a rate not seen since the height of the pandemic lockdowns in October 2020. All sectors are affected, but food and beverage services are worst hit, according to the October Business Risk Index (BRI) from CreditorWatch.
Annualised insolvency rates have more than doubled over the last 18 months, exceeding pre-COVID levels by about 25 percent.
Court actions are also now well above pre-COVID levels as large creditors such as banks and the ATO seek to recover debts. The number of cases went up by 13 percent from August 2023 to August 2024.
The average failure rate across all sectors currently sits at 5.04 percent of total businesses, up from 3.97 percent in October last year.
The previous high was 5.08 percent, recorded in October 2020 at the height of COVID-19. After the initial phase of the pandemic, the failure rate began to decrease steadily, before it began to rise again in October 2023.
The food and beverage sector recorded the highest failure rate of all industries in the recent study, increasing to 8.5 percent…
