High inflation negatively affects consumers and their purchasing power. Retail sales are in decline, and this is also reflected in the development of the business base. Total number of retail establishments companies but it started to decrease as early as 2017 or 2020 in the case of natural persons. According to current data from Dun & Bradstreet, 33,152 companies and almost 122,000 self-employed persons engaged in retail trade are currently registered in the Czech Republic. That’s the least since 2016.
“Retail turnover for 2022 fell by 3.6% and that trend continues in the first months of this year. The difficult period during the pandemic was replaced by an energy crisis and consequently rising inflation, which is reflected in the real drop in income of most households that are thus forced to save. Compared to the period before the pandemic, the business base of joint-stock companies and limited liability companies operating in retail has decreased by 11%, and in the case of the self-employed by as much as a third,” Dun & Bradstreet analyst Petra Štěpánová comments on the current situation.
The number of limited liability companies and joint stock companies operating in the retail sector has been in a slight decline since 2017, however, there has been a sharp decline between 2020 and 2021, with the business base reduced by 7.8% of entities. From 2021, only a slight decrease in the number of retail establishments can be observed companies. At the same time, from 2020, approximately half as many new ones are created companies than in previous years.
The largest number of entrepreneurs – natural persons (self-employed) whose activity is retail was registered in the Czech Republic in 2020. The largest decline in the entrepreneurial base occurred between 2021 and 2022, when the number of entrepreneurs was reduced by a quarter from 172,000 to 130,000 compared to the previous year. At the same time, in the long run, the number of terminated jobs is approximately twice the number of newly registered ones.
Development of numbers companies
in retail trade (NKD 47) from 2016 to 2023
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