BERLIN, Feb. 15 (Xinhua) -- The number of new large companies in Germany fell over 9 percent year-on-year in 2022, according to the country's Federal Statistical Office (Destatis).
Registrations of new large companies fell 9.3 percent to 115,100 last year, according to a report published by Destatis on Wednesday.
At the same time, Destatis said that insolvencies in Europe's largest economy rose in 2022: the number of business shutdowns performed by large companies increased by 2.7 percent, to just under 90,000.
Due to "extreme price rises" for energy and food as a result of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Germany faced a "historically high" annual inflation rate of 7.9 percent in 2022. After a brief decline at the end of the year, inflation started to rise again to 8.7 percent in January.
According to a recent study by the Centre for European Economic Research, Germany was the biggest loser in a comparison of international business locations. It has dropped four ranks since 2020, to 18th place.
"The quality of Germany as an industrial location has fallen dramatically," the study's authors said. "The high energy prices, an area that we can hardly change at the moment, should serve as an incentive to improve investment conditions."
The situation for startups also deteriorated. Last year, the number of newly-established startup companies in Germany dropped 18 percent to less than 3,000, according to the German Startups Association. Most startups were founded in Berlin, but Munich led the population-adjusted ranking.
"The startup ecosystem is not immune to the difficult economic situation," said Magdalena Oehl, vice chair of the Startups Association. The decline could become "a problem for Germany's already crippled innovative power," she said. ■
