A new series of reports, intended to assist British exporters in protecting themselves against bad debts in three European Union accession states, has been published by credit company Atradius.
The country reports on the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary provide detailed intelligence on country credit ratings and economic outlook, recommended payment options and related issues.
The company says that few businesses factor in local differences in business procedure when doing business in jurisdictions in which they may have limited experience. Examples of local 'nous' that may be assist UK exporters include:
- In the Czech Republic, recovering a debt through the court system takes on average almost a third as long again as elsewhere in Europe. Czech insolvency proceedings routinely take up to nine years.
- In Hungary, over 95% of debtors do not have the assets to satisfy their creditis
- Hungarian debtors can be charged 7% over the local base rate
Launching the reports, Chris Davies of Atradius said: "The EU accession countries offer some of the biggest and most lucrative trading opportunities for UK businesses. But just because they are now members of the EU it does not mean that doing business there is the same as trading
with a UK customer."
The Country Reports can be downloaded from the Atradius website at:
www.atradius.co.uk