Bureaucracy eats billions: SMEs are fighting for survival!

Bureaucracy eats billions: SMEs are fighting for survival!

German companies, especially medium -sized companies, face enormous bureaucratic stress that adds up to 61 billion euros per year. A current KfW study shows that employees in medium -sized companies spend an average of around 7% of their working hours with administrative tasks. This corresponds to impressive 1.5 billion hours of work a year that flow into bureaucratic processes, while essential business processes suffer. bnn.de KfW is based on the experience of around 10,000 small and medium -sized companies.

The legal requirements and procedures take a significant part of the resources. According to the KfW Mittelstands expert Michael Schwarz, a clearly regulated process is important, but the associated costs can exceed the hoped-for advantages. The construction industry and solo relevant people are particularly affected, while larger companies tend to overcome fewer bureaucratic hurdles.

growing burdens and psychological costs

In recent years, 90% of companies reported on increased bureaucracy lettings, as the IFO Institute stated in a survey. This development leads to a constant competition for resources and limits the innovative strength of the companies. Psychological costs in dealing with complex bureaucratic structures also play a central role, since companies have to focus on compliance with new regulations again and again. State government carried out it, no demonstrable sustainability problems showed, but still did not cause any changes in the law.

Current politics represents the reduction of bureaucracy as a urgent economic policy topic. Governments had previously announced similar projects, but with limited success. The current catalog of bureaucratic regulations is so extensive that entrepreneurs Frank Walter from Kassel leads a "qualal list" of new regulations to keep an overview. At the same time, numerous initiatives for reducing these stresses, such as the "One in, Two Out" regulation favored by the Union, are running, while the current regulation with "One in, one out" is not consequently implemented.

potential for economic growth

A targeted reduction in bureaucracy could release the potential to increase the economic performance of Germany by 4.6%. Analyzes of the IFO Institute estimate that the reduction in bureaucratic hurdles of the economy could enable an additional 146 billion euros in added value. The comparison with Sweden illustrates the misery: tax returns take 122 hours there, but almost twice as long in Germany. Real estate purchases only last 7 days in Sweden, while an average of 52 days in this country. Spiegel.de calls these comparisons as alarming indicators for the necessity of an effective Bureaucratic mining.

The knowledge of these studies and surveys clearly show that a courageous step in the direction of a detoxified bureaucracy would not only relieve medium -sized businesses, but could also lead to the general strengthening of the German economy.