Press release: Tax arrears display growth
Fresh statistical data of Krediidiinfo AS representing the payment behavior of companies in Estonia display that the amounts owed to the state increased by 48.6% in the first half of 2016. The growth has been registered for the third year in a row and has been uniform in almost all sectors.
The tax arrears of actively operating companies amounted to a total of 34.6 million euros. The sector to have almost tripled the amount of tax arrears is the mining and processing industry. The only sectors in which tax arrears decreased are finance and insurance as well as wholesale and retail sales. The median value of tax arrears was 2,499 euros, which is the highest over three last years.
The share of companies with tax arrears (5.4%) has stayed the same in comparison with the same period last year, and a total of 4,000 companies actively operating in Estonia owe taxes to the state. As far as the share of companies in tax arrears is concerned, the accommodation and catering sector (10.5%), the construction sector (10.1%) and the processing industry sector (9.1%) should be noted.
On the contrary, the payment defaults i.e. the amounts owed by companies to one another decreased by 27.2% compared to the same period of last year and stopped at 24 million euros. The sectors in which the decrease in payment defaults was the largest are accommodation and catering as well as transportation and warehousing. Some decrease could also be seen in the amounts owed in the mining and processing industry sector, but they still constituted over a half (60%) of the total amount of payment defaults. The median value of payment defaults was 928 euros.
The share of companies with payment defaults decreased in almost all sectors compared to last year. The number of actively operating companies with payment defaults was 1960 i.e. 2.7%. the largest numbers of firms owing to their partners can be found in the accommodation and catering sector (5.3%) and in the construction sector (4.8%).
The share of high credit risk companies as of August 2016 decreased to the 11.3% implying an economic stagnation period, which means that credit policy of Estonian companies is conservative and sales activity is rather weak.
The statistics of companies’ payment behavior are based on Krediidiinfo’s Credit Register and the data provided by the Estonian Tax and Customs Board. The sample consists of 74,405 companies actively operating in Estonia.
Krediidiinfo AS specializes in international credit information gathering, processing and intermediation, focusing on decreasing financial risks of Estonian companies.
The research in full is available here: http://www.krediidiinfo.ee/files/mhrstatistika_2016_esimesel_pa.pdf
Additional information:
Alar Jäger, assistant director of Krediidiinfo AS
Tel.: 665 9611
E-mail: alar.jager@krediidiinfo.ee