The indebtedness of businesses has reached its historical maximum in the first half of 2022, exceeding 88,695 million euros, a figure that represents 22% of all loans to the services sector and 15.6% of total loans to companies in Spain, according to the report ‘Evolution of Credit to Companies in Spain by sectors of activity 2022’, prepared by the consulting firm AIS Group.
In this way, not even in the boom years of the real estate bubble, in the mid-2000s, loans to these companies reached this figure.
The indebtedness of the ‘retail’ has been growing since 2016, although in 2020 the need for financing triggered the volume of loans in the sector to levels close to 10%, while in 2021 this growth stopped and the balance of the portfolio was reduced.
However, the first figures for this year show a new rise in debt of 3,000 million euros in the first half, 3.3% more.
“The ‘retail’ is, in fact, the only business segment in the services sector whose indebtedness is growing in 2022”, underlined the commercial director of AIS, David Fernandez, who has warned that with the macroeconomic situation, marked by the post-pandemic , the war in Ukraine, the rise in energy prices and inflation, “leads us to anticipate that the need for trade credit will continue to grow in the coming months.”
According to the AIS Group report, these companies as a whole are the ones with the largest default portfolio, concentrating 27% of the total doubtful loans granted to service companies. At the end of the first half of 2022, this total was slightly above 4,945 million euros, which places the default rate for this business segment at 5.6%.
In this way, commerce registers the third highest rate among all productive activities after hospitality (8.41%) and construction (8.39%).
The report shows that despite the fact that its default rate is above the average for all companies, the aggregate default of businesses has been on the decline since the beginning of 2015 and has left behind records that doubled the current one.
In fact, the balance of the portfolio of doubtful loans, which doubled between 2010 and 2013, exceeding 10,000 million euros, began a downward path a few months later that not even the years of the pandemic have stopped, while the records of the first semester of 2022 confirm the consolidation of this trend.
Source: Europa Press
