Almost 6,000 companies and manufacturers have filed for the pre-bankruptcy settlement, more than 3,000 of which have settled before the trade courts, showed the latest data from the Croatian Financial Agency (Fina).

The data refers to the time since the Act on Financial Operations and Pre-Bankruptcy Settlement was passed on October 1, 2012, until Friday, April 27, this year. Petitions for the pre-bankruptcy settlement procedure were filed by 8,959 companies and manufacturers employing 66,761 people, with the collective debt of 82.4 billion kuna (€11.1 billion).

The pre-bankruptcy settlement procedure is implemented with the aim of establishing the liquidity and solvence of an indebted company.

Some 7,840 have filed for the settlement with a debt under 10 million kuna (€1.3 million), while some 1,116 companies’ debt surpassed that amount. The collective debt of the former amounts to 8.43 billion kuna (€1.14 billion), and of the latter to 74 billion kuna (€9.9 billion).

Only 35.9 percent companies have reached the phase where their plan of financial restructuring was accepted, or the settlement reached. The most of the settlements were reached before the courts in Zagreb (1012) and the eastern city of Osijek (558).