> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.businessbagel.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # South African insolvencies have fallen every way you measure them, and credit insurers expect them back up - URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/south-africa-insolvencies-august-2026-stats-sa-coface/ - Published: 2026-09-24T03:45:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-24T03:44:59.000Z - Description: Stats SA counted 114 insolvencies in August and 1,010 for the year, and the credit insurer Coface is forecasting the number straight back up. - Author: Christian Maidman - Tags: Economy, Business Bagel News Statistics South Africa published 114 insolvencies for August, and every comparison in the release points down. The running total for the year reached 1,010\. August came in a fifth below July, 44% below August last year, and the eight months to August ran 17.3% below the same stretch of 2025. The count is narrower than the word suggests. An insolvency in this series is an individual or a partnership placed under final sequestration, the legal finding that someone cannot pay what they owe. Companies that fail do not appear in it at all. They are counted as liquidations, in a separate release, which stood at 1,601 for the year to July. A thousand businesses did not go under this year; a thousand people and partnerships were sequestrated. ## Why a falling count proves less than it looks A low number of closures can mean one of two things. It can point to a healthier business environment, or to fewer businesses left around to fail. In an economy with stagnant growth, high unemployment and a heavy red-tape burden, the second reading is at least as available as the first. The three-month figure shows the size of the move either way: insolvencies in the three months to August fell 37.9% on a year earlier, from 517 cases to 321. The liquidation series has the same interpretation problem running the other way. A liquidation is the winding-up of a company or close corporation when its liabilities exceed its assets, and it happens either by order of the court or voluntarily. Voluntary liquidations can be part of ordinary business activity, which is one reason insolvencies, not liquidations, are treated as the closer read on how struggling businesses actually are. Stats SA recorded 239 liquidations in July. ## The series that only starts in 2023 Comparison is limited by how recently the data came back. Stats SA stopped receiving insolvency figures after a cyber incident at the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development in 2021\. In April 2023 it split the combined liquidations and insolvencies release in two and put insolvencies on hold until the supply resumed. The first new release came out on 21 July this year, covering June, with a time series reaching back to January 2023, and Stats SA warns it is not a continuation of the old one, because of the break between September 2021 and December 2022. Coface, which sells cover against exactly this risk, is not reading the fall as a recovery. It expects South African insolvencies to rise in coming quarters, because price pressures and interest rate increases show up in this data with a lag, so August is describing borrowing conditions that have already moved. Globally, business insolvencies rose 12% in early 2026 on a 22% jump in North America, and Coface has lifted its forecast for the year to 6% growth, with construction, chemicals and textiles the sectors under most pressure. August's liquidation figures land on 30 September. They are the next check on which of the two readings the numbers are actually describing.