The European Commission (EC) wants to put a stop to late payments in commercial operations. His intentions is that the deadline for companies to pay their invoices, including the businesses of self-employed workers, is 30 days. Not one more. The firm that exceeds this limit will have a series of surcharges with which Brussels intends to dissuade companies from failing to comply with the new regulations. On paper it might seem that the EC’s plans have no negative side. But they have it, at least in the Canary Islands. This is stated by the great employers’ association of the Archipelago, the one represented by the president of the Provincial Confederation of Businessmen of Santa Cruz de Tenerife (CEOE-Tenerife), Pedro Alfonsoand his counterpart from the Canarian Confederation of Businessmen (CCE), Pedro Ortega. Both consider it essential that businesses in the region be exempted from the Community Regulation on late payment, which is about to leave the EC kitchen to be published in the Official Journal of the European Union. If this is not achieved, for which it is necessary for the Government of Spain to request it and justify it before the community authorities – the only valid interlocutors in Brussels are the Member States, not their territories -, There will be almost no company in the Islands that can get rid of the cartel. delinquent. In fact, up to 69% of Canarian firms – practically seven out of ten, a total of 104,000 – would be in trouble to meet the strict payment deadline that is intended to be imposed.
The latest data from Informa D&B, the subsidiary of the Cesce group specialized in commercial information, marketing and market studies, They leave island companies as those that are most late in the country in paying their invoices. Businesses in the Autonomous Community take an average of 22.7 days, well above the 14.9 days that, also on average, signatures from the rest of Spain take. What’s more, only 31.3% of the 152,000 firms in the Archipelago, just under 48,000, pay their suppliers on time. It is also the worst percentage in the country, in this case the lowest. The remaining 68.7%, the aforementioned 104,000, are delayed in the payment of invoices to a greater or lesser extent, but all of them are delayed. So with the tightening of the community guideline on late payment, with that maximum and non-postponable period of 30 days, it turns out that around 69% of Canarian companies – 69 out of every hundred, seven out of ten – will be under the threat of sanctions. –Spain must create a body managing the regulations with the capacity to fine– and the payment of interest that could exceed 12% of the amount owed, according to the latest proposed regulation. “Everyone” in the Islands will be delinquent, the president of the CCE ironically said this Thursday, who like his counterpart from the CEOE-Tenerife explained that the longer average delay of businesses in the Archipelago in paying their invoices is not even a coincidence. , neither inexplicable, nor much less intended. It is something justifiable and even logical.
The CEOE-Tenerife and the Canarian Confederation of Entrepreneurs ask to exempt the region from the regulations
Not in vain, the particularities of the outermost periphery also reach billing. It has nothing to do with the supply process of a company in Madrid or Seville, which acquires an input, a raw material or any product and can have it only hours later in its warehouse – just as long as it takes the transporter’s truck to travel the route. by road–, than that of a business in Puerto de la Cruz, Agaete or Tijarafe. Here the goods enter by plane or, in most cases, by ship, which involves more procedures. It is precisely that, the extra time that an island firm must wait to obtain supplies, which increases the average payment period of Canarian companies, since if a transaction or commercial operation is delayed, the billing and payment of the stipulated amount. That is why Pedro Ortega warned that with the new Community Regulation “we want to homogenize what is not homogenizable”. In other words: There is a risk of treating a company from Madrid the same as one from Tenerife or Gran Canaria.with which ultimately the singularity of the Outermost Regions is once again neglected, de facto (RUP) and, in the case of the Islands, its Economic and Fiscal Regime (REF). Exactly both tools that compensate for the remoteness, fragmentation and small market of the Archipelago.
The businesses of the Archipelago are the ones that take the longest to pay their invoices in all of Spain
In short, adds Pedro Alfonso, the “sensitivity” of the Government of Pedro Sanchez to ring the bell in Brussels and remember that the Regulation on late payment must also take into account the particularities of the ORs, and specifically the Canary Islands. Whether by giving a longer payment period to businesses located in those regions, or by granting a moratorium on the application of the regulations –The Regulation will enter into force twelve months after its official publication–, either specifying that the 30 days will not begin to count in the Islands and other outermost territories until the goods enter the border. If this is not achieved –“and to get it you first have to ask for it”Alfonso stressed, The productive fabric will lose competitiveness compared to companies on the continentsomething that both employers’ presidents agree on.
The head of CEOE-Tenerife also recalled that Canarian firms tend to overstock –acquiring and accumulating a surplus of merchandise in its warehouses to be covered in the event of eventualities–, which in many cases means that large quantities are imported and thus slow down transportation, procedures and billing. With a limit of 30 days, we will have to go to orders less voluminous to hurry up with deadlines, so the risk of missing products when they arrive incorrectly will increase..
