PHOTO: Emily Stanton of Nyngan receiving a Business Award early in 2024
Creditor Watch, the Australian credit reporting bureau, has released gloomy July results for its Business Risk Index (BRI) which show 87.2 per cent of regions around Australia will experience an increase in the failure rate of businesses over the next 12 months.
While Western Sydney and South-East Queensland are expected to see the highest rates of business failure over the coming year, in what is good news for rural and regional areas, the regions expected to experience the lowest business failure rates over the next 12 months are typically in regional areas across the country.
With a combination of lower commercial rents, lower competition among businesses, stronger local economies and older populations and areas where agriculture is the dominant market, this sector is less impacted by high interest rates, as the goods produced are largely non-discretionary and demand for them increases broadly in line with population growth, which has been strong…