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Nuremberg (dpa) - The Federal Employment Agency sees no further wave of insolvencies rolling in Germany despite the closure of numerous companies in the corona lockdown.
"Our numbers do not give anything like that at the moment," said the chairman of the Federal Employment Agency, Detlef Scheele, in an interview with the German press agency.
By November 2020, almost 1.2 billion euros had been paid in bankruptcy money.
In the same period of the previous year it was 723 million euros.
The 2020 figures also include the bankruptcy of a large retail chain that was not due to the pandemic.
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This should mean the bankruptcy of Galeria Kaufhof.
However, several larger companies went bankrupt in 2020, to whose difficulties the corona problem at least contributed - including the restaurant chain Vapiano and Germany's largest hairdresser chain Klier.
For the current year, a total of 1.6 billion euros are available in the federal agency's budget, said Scheele.
"We don't know if we need that," he said.
The same amount was entered in the budget for 2021.
The order of magnitude is based on the expenditure on the economic and financial crisis.
For companies overindebted as a result of the pandemic, the obligation to file for insolvency remains suspended at least until the end of January - mainly because the disbursement of state corona aid has been delayed.
Usually, an application for bankruptcy must be filed no later than three weeks after a reason for bankruptcy such as over-indebtedness or insolvency occurs.
For companies that are over-indebted but not insolvent due to the corona pandemic, this obligation was suspended in the spring - initially until September, then until the end of December.
Now this exemption applies at least to January 2021.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 201219-99-751136 / 2