Amendment to the act on counteracting excessive delays in commercial transactions in the government’s plans

As a reminder, the solutions introduced in 2019 were aimed at protecting smaller enterprises against payment backlogs, which could paralyze the activities of companies and lead them to bankruptcy. The most important ones were shortening payment deadlines, introducing the right of the President of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection to prosecute companies causing the greatest bottlenecks and obliging the largest companies to report their payment practices.

t was this last obligation that was the subject of the greatest criticism from market participants due to the complicated and unclear procedure. As the author of the project points out in the summary published on government websites, it is planned:

• a change in the method of reporting benefits provided and received,
• exclusion of certain types of transactions from the reporting obligation, including, inter alia, exemption of companies belonging to tax capital groups from this obligation,
• regulating directly in the act the exchange rate at which the value of cash benefits expressed in foreign currencies should be converted,
• specification of the accuracy with which the value of benefits and shares should be disclosed.

Importantly, according to the assumptions of the draft amendment, it is planned to extend the obligation to submit a declaration of status to all large entrepreneurs. Currently, only large debtor entrepreneurs are required to declare their status to the other party to the commercial transaction. According to the Ministry of Development and Technology, under whose supervision the project is being created, there are now situations where large contractors conceal their status in order to be able to use the rights provided for in the act for SMEs. The change is intended to remedy this situation. In addition, it is proposed that the declaration should be made once in a given business relationship, and an update would be required in the event of a change of status – according to the applicable regulations, the declaration is made for each commercial transaction. The amendment also provides for an increase in the effectiveness of proceedings conducted by the President of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection regarding excessive delay in the payment of cash benefits.

The draft itself has not been published yet, but according to government plans, it is to be adopted before the end of the year.