Czech Statistical Office

Statistical registers department

Na padesátém 81, 100 82  Praha 10

Czech Republic

Business registrations and business bankrupties. Data are based on Statistical business register and administrative sources. They are collected quarterly and sent to Eurostat as absolute values. Because in every country, administrative rules of registrations and bancrupties differ, Eurostat presents the quarterly data as index series to improve comparability.

Business registrations are the number of entered legal units in the registration register at any time during the reference quarter Q, according to the respective administrative or legal procedure. Registrations is an early indicator to measure business intentions. Registrations cannot be directly compared with the birth of an enterprise. Registrations of businesses are part of administrative procedures, while annual data on enterprise births are based on the start-up of business activity in terms of having turnover, employment or investment. The registration of a legal unit can be considered as a declaration of intent but does not necessarily mean it follows business activity in line with annual business demography concept. Registration data are not based on the enterprise demography characteristics 'date of commencement of activities' but rather on the 'date of registration' that is not necessarily equal to 'date of commencement of activities'. The statistical unit in annual business demography statistics on births is the enterprise while quarterly data on registrations refer to legal units. Also if demographic events such as mergers, split-offs, take-over or restructuring result in creation of the new legal unit it is always business registration however it may not be enterprise birth inevitably. In addition the legal units which restart their activities after 2 calendar years are considered as an enterprise births but not business registrations. Registrations and births may also be recorded in different reference periods or years. Due to the methodological differences, there is no direct comparability to annual business demography statistics on births of enterprises. 

Business bankruptcies - The number of legal units that have started the procedure of being declared bankrupt, by issuing a court declaration, at any time during the reference quarter Q (which is often provisional and does not always mean cessation of an activity). Bankruptcies is an early indicator to measure situation in business environment. Quarterly bankruptcies are frequently different from annual business demography statistics on deaths of enterprises, because they cover deaths of enterprises due to bankruptcies as well as other enterprises which ended their activity for other reasons. Bankruptcies that were filed do not necessarily mean closing of the business. Even if an enterprise has declared for bankruptcy, it does not always mean that it ceases all activity when it enters into bankruptcy procedure. In order to be recorded as enterprise death in annual business demography typically all production factors have been dissolved / terminated. There are several methodological differences between the concepts of bankruptcies and enterprise deaths. Quarterly business demography data on bankruptcies are based on legal units, while annual business demography data on deaths is based on the statistical unit enterprise. In the Czech Republic, when a business declares itself bankrupt, it means that they can continue to trade under a certain opera tion control. Some businesses declaring themselves bankrupt may therefore eventually recover, and would therefore not be considered as enterprise death. To conclude, the scope and contents of annual business demography statistics on deaths of enterprises may differ considerably from quarterly data on bankruptcies, the levels of these two statistics may therefore vary considerably. If the enterprise does not restart its activities within 2 calendar year is considered to be dead but it does not inevitably mean that the legal unit is in bankruptcy. The bankruptcies represent only a fraction of all enterprise deaths. They cannot be directly compared with annual business demography data on deaths of enterprises.

NACE Rev.2 classification (Statistical Classification of Economic Activities in the European Community).

Market activities of NACE Sections B to N, and P to R and divisions S95 and S96.

The results cover the whole population of legal units, what represents institutional sectors of non-financial corporations, financial corporations and household firms.

Business registrations - are number of entered legal units in the constitutive register at any time during the certain reference period (quarter), according to the respective administrative or legal procedures.

Business bancrupties - The number of legal units that have started the procedure of being declared bankrupt by the relevant court at any time during the reference quarter and were registered into the Czech Republic's insolvency register within 30 days after finishing of reference period.

Legal units

The statistical population represents legal units with market activities of NACE Sections B to N, and P to R and divisions S95 and S9. The activities related to agriculture, fishery and forestry, public administration, defence or compulsory social security are not covered by these statistics as well as the activities of membership organisations, activities of households as employers and extra-territorial organisations and bodies. The sole proprietors are included in the population.

The whole Czech Republic.

Business registrations - from 2017 to 2023

Business bancrupties - from 2021 to 2023

Not relevant. Data are provided in absolut values.

Absolute values.

Quarter.

Legal acts and other agreements - EU level

• Regulation (EU) 2019/2152 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 November 2019 on European business statistics;
• Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2020/1197 of 30 July 2020 laying down technical specifications and arrangements pursuant to Regulation (EU) 2019/2152 of the European Parliament and of the Council on European business statistics.

Legal acts and other agreements - national level

•  Act No. 89/1995 Coll., on the State Statistical Service

Data are not confidential so it is possible to share them without any limitations according the Act No 89/1995 Coll. on the State Statistical Service, as amended. Data (pure numbers) are sent to Eurostat.

The protection of confidential data and the rules of their provision are laid down in the sections 16 and 17 of the Act No 89/1995 Coll. on the State Statistical Service, as amended. The statistical confidentiality issues are further elaborated in the internal CZSO Regulation no. 3/2015.

Data on business registrations and bancrupties are not confidential.

Data are transmitted to Eurostat which disseminates them in the form of index series. At national level only data on business registrations are published in the form of absolute values (data series). In the year 2024 the following dates are expected for the publication of business registrations at national level:

19.2. 2024 - Registration of businesses - 4. quarter of 2023,

20.5. 2024 - Registration of businesses - 1. quarter of 2024,

19.8. 2024 - Registration of businesses - 2. quarter of 2024,

18.11. 2024 - Registration of businesses - 3. quarter of 2024.

The Eurostat publishes data according to their release calendar. The national data on business registrations are published according to the Catalogue of Products.

The national data on business registrations are published in the Public database of the CZSO, which is freely accessible to all users via the CZSO website. In line with the Dissemination policy of the Czech statistical office and Europen Statistics code of practice the data are disseminated respecting professional independence and in an objective, professional and transparent manner in which all users are treated equitably. Eurostat disseminates data on business registrations and bancrupties on Eurostat's website. 

Quarterly.

No news release at national level.

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The national data on business registrations are published in the Public database of the CZSO. At Europen level data are published in full detail in the Eurostat database.

Not applicable, no micro-data available.

Data (absolute values) are transmitted to Eurostat within 40 days after the reference period. The transmission is done by eDAMIS using the SDMX format.

At national level the disseminated data are accompanied by the methodology and explanatory notes, which can be found directly under the data tables. At the European level the European business statistics manual provides a detailed description of European business statistics, including how they are compiled and the methodologies behind them.

The information about the international comparability of data, coherence, accuracy, data corrections and revisions is part of the methodology that accompanies disseminated data. In addition we intend to accompany the published data with this metadata report. 

The main quality principles are laid down in CZSO quality policy (only in Czech language). In addition quality checks and validation of data are done throughout the whole process of data preparation. The validation rules and checks are described in the detailed national methodology, which is not available to the public.

The overall data quality is trade off between the accuracy and timelines. Due to short time it is not possible to obtain accurate data about the whole population (see point 13 accuracy).

The business registration and bancruptcy statistics are relevant as an early indicator to measure business intentions and business environment. 

No user satisfaction surveys are carried out exclusively for STS statistics.

The statistics on business registrations and bancrupties are completely in line with the requirement of:

• Regulation (EU) 2019/2152 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 November 2019 on European business statistics;
• Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2020/1197 of 30 July 2020 laying down technical specifications and arrangements pursuant to Regulation (EU) 2019/2152 of the European Parliament and of the Council on European business statistics.

Data are produced 30 days after finished quarter. At that time only the information from constitutive administrative sources (public register, trade register) are available for assignment of economic activity code. Thus the assignment of economic activity may not be accurate or possible in case of newly registered legal units. In addition at that time not all legal units, which were declared bancrupt by the court are not available in the Czech Republic's insolvency register which is main source for these statistics.

Not applicable. Data are produced from the statistical business register and administrative sources.

As for other administrative event based data, the registration delays might be a source of errors, in particular for declarations of bankruptcies.

The final data are transmitted to Eurostat within T+40 days after the reference period as laid down by the Annex I (Table 1) of the Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2020/1197 of 30 July 2020 laying down technical specifications and arrangements pursuant to Regulation (EU) 2019/2152 of the European Parliament and of the Council on European business statistics.

The data are provided without delays according to the deadlines set up by the the Annex I (Table 1) of the Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2020/1197 and Catalogue of Products.

The whole national territory is equally covered. The sole proprietors are included in the population. At Europen level the geographical comparability is secured by the application of common definitions laid down in Annex IV of Regulation (EU) 2019/2152 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 November 2019 on European business statistics.

As regards business bankruptcies statistics there is the break between data Q3 2021 and Q4 2021. The reason is that before Q4 2021 the administrative source (Czech Republic's insolvency register), we use for business bankruptcies statistics, sent us data immediately after the finishing of reference periods (T+2 days). However, at that time the insolvence register has not registered all business bankruptcies for the reference quarter because it is decentralised IT system and not all courts were able to record their decisions about the bankruptcy into the system within such short period. As a result from the beginnig of this year the insolvency register sends us data 30 days after each quarter to improve coverage of bankruptcies. It was not possible to revise data on the previous period as the insolvency register is further updated and not able to send us situation at T+30.

There are no breaks in business registration statistics.

Registrations cannot be directly compared with the birth of an enterprise due to the reasons mentioned in 3.1. of this report. Quarterly bankruptcies are frequently different from annual business demography statistics on deaths of enterprises dut to the reasons mentioned in 3.1. of this report.

All data are produced according the common methodology so they are internally coherent.

No burden on respondents - the data are produced from the statistical business register and administrative sources. Costs of the CZSO for the indicators are estimated as 420 person-hours per year.

Data revisions are treated according to CZSO data revision policy. The same revision policy is applied nationally and in transmission to Eurostat.

No data revisions.

The main data sources are: Statistical business register (RES),  the Basic register of legal and natural persons (ROS) and Czech Republic's insolvency register.

Quarter

Data are collected from statistical business register and administrative sources.

The following validations are carried out:

• format and file structure checks,
• intra-file checks (e.g. legat unit checks between SBR and Insolvency register),
• intra-domain, intra-source checks (e.g comparisions with the previous reference periods).

The population of registered legal units is delineated from the Statistical business register (RES) according to the information acquired from the Basic register of legal and natural persons (ROS). RES is updated from ROS on daily basis. The NACE classification is derived from the activities coded or described in the trade licencing register, Commercial register or other administrative sources.

In case of business bancrupties the population is delineated from the data provided by Czech Republic's insolvency register at T+30. The NACE classification is aquired from RES  according to the activities coded or described in the trade licencing register, Commercial register or other administrative sources. Also the information about the activities from statistical surveys and Ministry of Finance are used for NACE classification in case of business bancrupties.

No adjustements.

No additional comments.