The number of corporate bankruptcies in Japan in May fell 8.9 percent from a year earlier to 1,045 — the seventh straight monthly drop, a research agency said Monday.
The number of business failures was the second-lowest for the reporting month in 20 years, after May 2010, when bankruptcies totaled 1,021, Tokyo Shoko Research said.
The number has continued to decline despite the expiration in March of a law on financial support for small companies, according to the research agency, which conducts surveys on business failures with debts of ¥10 million or more.
The debts left by failed businesses in May plunged 38.6 percent to ¥173.3 billion, a 20-year low for May, due to the smaller number of failures with large debts, it said. Only one bankruptcy exceeded ¥10 billion.
By region, the number of business failures declined in all nine regions covered by the survey except the Hokuriku region, which logged the same number of failures. The number of bankruptcies declined in seven of 10 industrial categories.