ALMOST 100 companies will be forced out of business every month by the end of 2009, a Dublin credit bureau has predicted.

BusinessPro, which publishes Stubbs Gazette, expects that the rate of corporate collapses this year will almost double from 550 in 2008.

Data collected by the bureau shows that 54 creditor liquidations took place in the first quarter of 2009, more than twice as many as in the same period a year earlier.

A further 30 companies were wound up by the courts, up from an average of 15 winding-up orders a quarter last year, the bureau said.

“We are now seeing the grim realities of the credit crunch and the backlash from a seriously overheated economy,” said BusinessPro’s managing director James Treacy.

The bureau found that almost a third of all insolvencies in the first quarter occurred in the building sector. This was closely followed by the distribution sector, which accounted for 26 per cent.

Mr Treacy also highlighted the fact that another class of companies are opting to go into liquidation of their own accord.

More than 250 companies elected to go into voluntary liquidation in the first quarter of the year.

Unlike compulsory liquidations, these companies must file a declaration of solvency and in most cases creditors should be paid in full, Mr Treacy explained.

In a survey conducted on BusinessPro’s website, almost three-quarters of respondents said that their working capital was affected by an increase in debtor days, while a quarter said they had been affected by the tightening of banking finance.

In addition, some 60 per cent of businesses which responded said they had noticed an increase in the number of fraudulent credit account and loan applications in the last year as the economy had deteriorated.