The countries that show an increase are highly suspect. What in fact consitutes a congregation by their definition?
i.e. - 348 in in the Congo and 198 in Brazil !!
I suspect that when they sell a cong, the pubs lived so far away that small groups began to be counted as congregations.
On the other hand, -98 in the USA? That is less than 2 per state. I think it is a stretch to say that. I know for a certainty that some cities closed multiples of that number.
All of this is virtually impossible to verify of course, as WTC knows. They provide no details, because none exist.