Consumers are burdened by high energy and food prices. Nevertheless, there are fewer personal bankruptcies, the numbers in the southwest are below the national average. But there is no all-clear.
Stuttgart (dpa / lsw) - Despite high inflation and financial burdens, the number of private bankruptcies in Baden-Württemberg has fallen in the first nine months. The credit agency Crif counted 7,141 personal bankruptcies, 13 percent fewer than in the same period last year. With 64 personal bankruptcies per 100,000 inhabitants, the rate in the southwest was one of the lowest in Germany - only Bavaria was below with 52.
However, the numbers had risen sharply in the first nine months of 2021 as a result of a change in the law. The comparison is therefore distorted. Crif Germany Managing Director Frank Schlein believes that a wave of debt is possible due to rising costs. In the long run, less income leads first to over-indebtedness and then possibly to personal bankruptcy.
In the first nine months of the current year, the consequences of the change in the law, which makes it possible to be released from the remaining debt after three instead of six years, had an impact on the previous year. According to experts, a number of those affected had therefore waited with their bankruptcy application, which subsequently drove up the numbers for 2021.
Compared to the first three quarters of 2019 - i.e. the period before the legal reform and before Corona - the number of personal bankruptcies in the southwest increased by 23.1 percent.
