Today, the Assembly finished the debate on the Draft Law on deadlines for the settlement of financial obligations, which, according to the Minister of Finance, Novica Vuković, should contribute to the improvement of the business environment and provide better liquidity for companies.
"The proposed legal solution will shorten the deadlines for settling financial obligations, which will lead to an improvement in the business environment and thus provide better liquidity, especially in the sector of small and medium-sized enterprises that suffer significant consequences due to non-payment of financial obligations within the deadline," said Vuković in the Assembly during discussions about that act, which will be declared later.
He explained that the main reason for the adoption of this law is to comply with the European Union (EU) Directive on combating late payments in commercial transactions.
Vuković stated that the existing legal solution in many parts did not adequately transpose the provisions of the directive.
"The inconsistency of the existing legal solution is primarily reflected in the definition of longer deadlines for the settlement of financial obligations, both between companies and between companies and the public sector," said Vuković.
For payments made between the public sector and companies, the Directive prescribes a general term of 30 days, and in special cases up to 60 days.
The directive also regulates issues of payment terms between companies. These terms are limited to 60 days, unless otherwise stipulated by the contract between the companies and unless it is particularly unfair to the creditor.
The MP of the Bosniak Party, Admir Adrović, announced that the delay in payments between companies is one of the key causes of the illiquidity of the economy and a serious problem for the Montenegrin economy.
"Small and medium-sized enterprises, which make up the majority, are particularly affected by this phenomenon, which causes difficulties in paying salaries, late payments to suppliers and the inability to invest in development," said Adrović.
He stated that there are a large number of smaller producers or agricultural producers who market their products in large retail chains and due to inadequate payments for their goods, they often stop producing and this is one of the big problems.
"The basic intention of the law is to speed up payment transactions. If we implement this, it will contribute to more efficient payment transactions and a reduction in legal disputes," added Adrović.
The MP of the Social Democrats, Boris Mugoša, said that the question is how the law will be applied.
"Since 2014, we have had a law on the settlement of financial obligations, and since 2019, I have been asking what is happening with it. In application, it turned out that it has no essential effects and we concluded that we have a law that is not applicable", explained Mugoša.
He added that now there is a new legal solution that has been improved, where payment deadlines have been shortened.
"The point is whether it will mean anything to us in practice," said Mugoša.
He assessed that the supervision of the application of the law must be better and that the authorities must control the subjects ex officio.
"I support the law both before and now, I just think that the application will not be adequate, because the environment is bad," Mugoša said.
MP of the New Serbian Democracy, Velimir Đoković, said that he would support the proposed legal solution.
"This law is also very welcome from the economic point of view in Montenegro, because we had earlier the opening of phantom companies, which were deliberately opened with a short term and remained indebted to suppliers," said Đoković.
He stated that those phantom companies in the long period of the previous decades incurred not a small tax debt, the greater part of which is uncollectible.
"The deadline of 30 to 60 days is, however, perhaps short, because I think that in Montenegro the conditions may not yet be ripe for certain companies to have liquidity so quickly," Đoković concluded.
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