BERLIN, Oct. 9 (Xinhua) -- The number of business insolvencies in Germany rose 6.9 percent year-on-year in the first seven months of 2026, official data showed Friday, as prolonged economic weakness and high operating costs continued to weigh on companies in Europe's largest economy.
A total of 15,185 corporate insolvencies were registered between January and July, according to the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis).
In July alone, the number of insolvencies climbed 8 percent from a year earlier to 2,373. The number marked the highest level for the month since 2013, according to the German Chamber of Commerce and Industry (DIHK).
"Every 19 minutes, a company in Germany files for insolvency," said Marc Evers, a small and medium-sized business expert at the DIHK, warning that the figures showed the economic recovery was not reaching large parts of the economy.
Evers said the modest economic upturn risked being short-lived, as it was driven largely by debt-financed government spending rather than a broad-based improvement in business conditions.
He urged policymakers to accelerate structural reforms, saying high energy costs, labor expenses and excessive bureaucracy continued to weigh heavily on companies and hold back investment.
Destatis figures showed that transport and storage businesses were particularly hard hit, recording 85.5 insolvencies per 10,000 companies during the first seven months of the year, followed by the hospitality and construction sectors.
More recent figures indicated that insolvency pressures remained elevated. According to a closely watched insolvency tracker released Thursday by the Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH), corporate insolvencies rose 13 percent year-on-year and 9 percent from the previous month in September.
The September figure was 85 percent higher than the average for the same month in the pre-pandemic years from 2016 to 2019, the institute said. ■