The latest proposed regulations come in response to repeated demands from the food industry for tighter control over payments, frequently delayed by companies in order to maximise the potential of their cash. They will also implement EU legislation some four years after it was originally passed.
The changes to the rules will impose a 60 day limit on payments for all food products, with the exception of fresh and perishable goods, payment for which must be made within 30 days.
The Spanish authorities said that they would introduce a transitional system, allowing companies enough time to adapt to the new payment scheme - for the first year after the law is implemented, companies will be allowed up to 90 days to complete payments.
Food suppliers, for their part, broadly welcomed the changes to the law, long overdue in a country with some of the longest payment periods in the EU. But the Spanish food and drink federation FIAB said it could not understand why the national regulations had been watered down compared to the EU Directive - in particular on the rights of companies to go to the courts to claim back money owed to them.
The association also said that given the delay in transposing the European legislation, the decision to delay the full implementation of the regulations until 2007 was difficult to understand. It is now two years since the European Court of Justice ruled that Spain had failed in its duty to transpose the 2000 Directive on payment terms - a court case brought about by a complaint from FIAB.
The association said that Spain had the longest payment period among developed countries, with companies taking more than 130 days on average to pay invoices compared to less than 30 days for countries such as the Netherlands, the UK and Germany. In some cases, companies have even been known to wait six months before paying invoices, FIAB said.