BUSINESS failures in the North West rocketed by 18 per cent in 1999, according to latest figures.
Failures rose from 4,024 in 1998 to 4,749 in 1999. Company liquidations rose by 16.1 per cent to 2,105 and bankruptcies by 19.6 per cent to 2,644.
And Dun & Bradstreet which compiled the figures said things could get worse.
"The problems of the Y2K problem could be compounded by people using the millennium bug as a pretext for not paying their bills," said Phillip Mellor, senior analyst for D&B.
"The 'cheque has been lost in the computer' could be as familiar an excuse as the 'cheque has been lost in the post,'" he added.
"Because late payment is a frequent cause of business collapse, we would expect a rise in business bankruptcies in the first part of 2000. Then we would expect the number of business failures to drop as a result of the improvement in the economy."
Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.
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