Almost 400 Polish companies are waiting for payment of PLN 25.3 million from foreign contractors. The most unreliable foreign business partners for Polish companies are contractors from neighbouring countries. Lithuanians are in arrears the most, PLN 5.6 million. The Germans owe Poles a million less, i.e. PLN 4.6 million, and the Slovaks owed PLN 2.08 million.

A year earlier, Italy was in third place with over PLN 3.9 million. However, companies from this country have repaid a large part of their debt and currently, it is over PLN 1 million left. Great Britain is just behind the top three, with UK companies owing to Poland over PLN 1.9 million. Belgian and Dutch companies owe over a million PLN, and Latvians are close to this amount.

“There are currently 727 foreign companies in the National Debt Register (KRD) that have not paid their debts to Polish enterprises. Most, 83% of unreliable contractors are companies from the European Union with which Polish entrepreneurs do the most business. However, there are also quite exotic cases, such as debtors from São Tomé and Príncipe, Peru or New Zealand”, says Adam Łącki, President of the KRD Management Board.

The arrears of foreign entities reported in KRD may help other companies avoid cooperation with an unreliable contractor. However, still few companies decide to make such a move, because they do not know about such a possibility.

“It has a deep sense because it warns other Polish entrepreneurs against such contractors. Thus, it puts pressure on them to pay, otherwise, no one will sell them anything more” says the expert of the Rzetelna Firma (Honest Company) program, Andrzej Kulik.

Arkadiusz Słomczyński