COVID-19 measures delayed thousands of bankruptcies last year, resulting in a drop of 30 compared to the year before, Vecernji List daily reported on Monday.

A moratorium on enforcement procedures and the measures put in place to help businesses reduced the number of bankruptcies, with 4,796 initiated in commercial courts in 2020, down from 7,166 in 2019.

At the moment, there are 3,019 Financial Agency motions in courts for the bankruptcy of over-indebted businesses. Almost 4,000 bankrupt businesses owe HRK 17 billion and court decisions are pending for another 3,061, the newspaper said.

European institutions say the number of new business bankruptcies in the EU dropped year on year by 20% in Q3 2020 and by 40% in Q2. Croatia is no exception.

Eurostat says the relatively low number of bankruptcies can be explained with government measures to help businesses during the pandemic crisis which may have enabled those which would have declared bankruptcy to continue to work.

The European Commission has singled out Croatia and Romania as the worst member states where creditors collect only 30% of their claims through bankruptcy, unlike Belgium and Finland, where they collect 90% of their capital.