One in four Catalan SMEs has a debt of almost 80% of its liabilities, which puts its continuity at serious risk, “especially given the current situation of rising rates and inflation,” the president of Pimec warned this Monday, Antoni Cañete, during the presentation of the Catalan Pime Yearbook.
The work, which analyzes the situation of 82,991 companies during 2020 and 2021, confirms that the weight of own resources in the structure of liabilities was reduced to 53%, while the weight of debt increased to 47%. All of this, despite the fact that Catalan SMEs are recovering their income after the pandemic and their net financial profitability is already at 8.2%, very close to that of 2019.
The financial situation of SMEs would improve, the study highlights, if payment terms to companies were reduced. During 2021, the average collection period was reduced from 75 to 68 days, “still well above the legal period.” According to Cañete, if the average period were 30 days, as the European Commission has just proposed through the new regulation, the average result of SMEs would have improved by 15.8%.”
70% of the delays in payments correspond to large companies, added the president of the employers’ association during the presentation, in which the Business Councilor, Roger Torrent, and regional director of Banc Sabadell in Catalonia, Xavier Comerma, participated.
In 2021, Catalonia had a productive fabric of 531,077 companies, of which 99.8% were SMEs and of them, 306,612 did not have employees. The group of SMEs concentrates 62% of the GVA (Gross Added Value) and generates 68.5% of employment.
The latter recovers, with an increase in workforce of 4.1%. Now, it continues below the pre-pandemic era and the templates are very similar to those of 20 years ago.
