FinExpertiza: the number of closed companies in Russia exceeded the number of open ones by 13.6% in 2022

In Russia, 242.1 thousand new commercial enterprises were opened in 2022. This is 19.2 thousand or 8.6% more than the previous year. At the same time, 280.2 thousand companies were closed in the country – by 93.9 thousand or 25.1% less than a year earlier, TASS reports with reference to FinExpertiza data. The number of closed companies exceeded the number of open ones by 38.1 thousand or 13.6%. This is the smallest difference since 2015.

According to FinExpertiza President Elena Trubnikova, the number of annually registered commercial enterprises has stabilized at about the same level. At the same time, the number of liquidated companies has been declining for the third year in a row. In 19 regions, the number of open enterprises exceeded the number of closed ones; in the rest, the share of liquidations is higher than the share of registrations of new companies.

According to a study by FinExpertiza, most of the closed companies were excluded from the Unified State Register of Legal Entities by decision of the tax service. These are companies with signs of a fictitious business or actually inactive (during the year they did not conduct operations on bank accounts and did not submit tax returns). At the initiative of the owners, 17.5% or 49 thousand companies were liquidated, of which 6.9 thousand went bankrupt.

Another FinExpertiza study showedthat in the third quarter of 2022, the number of layoffs and employment of Russians reached a record over the past ten years. During this period, 3.24 million Russians left large and medium-sized Russian enterprises. At the same time, 3.17 million were employed over the same period. The largest outflow of personnel was found in the areas of trade, healthcare, social services, manufacturing, transportation and storage.

Laura Keffer