What is the interest rate for late payments in Cyprus for the first semester of 2016?

The Ministry of Energy, Commerce, Industry and Tourism of Cyprus has announced the reference interest rate for the first semester of 2016 (from 01.01 to 30.01.2016), which is 0.05%.

This means that the statutory interest rate for late payments for the aforementioned period would be 8.05%.

As a reminder, in the Law on Combating late payment in commercial transactions (123(I)/2012), it is stated that the statutory interest rate for late payment  must be equal to the sum of the reference rate, plus eight percentage points at least. The reference rate is published at the beginning of each period (each semester) on the site of the Ministry of Energy, Commerce, Industry and Tourism.

According to the Cyprus and the EU legislation, if the clients of a business pay their invoices later than the established deadline, then the business is entitled to claim interest on the delayed payments. In order to do so, the following two conditions must be met:

• the creditor (i.e. the business) must have met its contractual and legal obligations;

AND

• the creditor has not received the payment on time with the exception of cases in which the debtor is not responsible for the delay.

You can find further information in our related article on the delayed payments.

For legal advice on matters regarding your commercial transactions, you can get in touch with our lawyers.