Bulgarian companies delay payments of 50.4% of their debt, according to the European Payment Habits 2010 survey of global company EOS Group, which operates on the Bulgarian market.

Only one in two corporate bills (49.6%) is paid within the deadline. According to the survey, Bulgarian companies have the lowest share of timely payments among nine European countries.

The companies polled in the survey said that the get in time approximately 53% of their dues, which is more than 3% less than last year.

The results of the survey tie with data by the Confederation of Employers and Industrialists in Bulgaria (CEIBG), whose executive director Evgenii Ivanov put the finger of blame to the state for failing to pay off debt to business in time. More pressure comes from companies’ low liquidity as the global economic crisis continues to bite.

One in five (21 percent) Bulgarian companies have had liquidity jeopardised by writedowns, which account for 3.8% of the overall debt. Services companies have been most seriously hurt, failing to collect 5.5% of their receivables from private contractors.

Rayna Mitkova-Todorova, EOS Matrix manager for Bulgaria, said that many companies do not even warn of delayed debt or only do it when it is too late.

“But practice shows that the sooner a professional warning is made about delayed debt, the likeliest the possibility for them to be covered and difficulties avoided,” she said.