Businesses in the country as a whole may be in an unfavourable position, but this does not apply to all companies. There are companies that manage to save some money and even to open new deposits. This should explain the fact why from the period from the beginning of the year till the end of September the money in the bank accounts of companies increased by nearly BGN2.3 billion – from BGN19.03 billion to BGN21.32 billion. The Central Bank’s statistics allows conclusions to be drawn as to which are the most prosperous sectors. The most money in bank accounts are kept by players in the commercial sector – almost BGN4 billion. Immediately after this groups comes the manufacturing industry, with BGN2.4 billion. This includes the entire manufacturing sector – from machines and equipment to medicines and printing. Third in this list comes the energy sector- BGN1.07 billion, followed by construction – BGN1.04 billion. It turns out that the situation of builders is better than what their incessant complaints depict. It appears that this sector keeps in bank accounts almost as much money as energy companies do.
In general, most of the corporate money is the so-called overnight (24 hours) deposits, which are renewed every day, and the second largest groups is of current accounts. So fresh funds are permanently available to the firms to be able to pay for purchased goods and services and salaries, taxes and insurance. We will try to lift the veil on some of the services that banks offer to help
preserve accumulated corporate wealth.
As we said most of it is in overnight deposits, because this is the only way companies can quickly put it into current operations. Yields on these financial instruments are negligible – between 0.03% and 0.4% and in rare cases – up to 0.5% annually. Even with some of the larger institutions that rate is achieved only if the balance of an account does not fall below BGN500,000. Moreover, interest rates on current accounts for citizens are no different.
But more interesting here are deposits for corporate clients, where business keep their money for three, six, twelve months and in some cases up to three years. This is an investment that in modern times should bring a solid income. For some it may seem strange, but according to statistics of the Bulgarian National Bank, the deposits of companies with locally operating bank exceed BGN6.5 billion. There are no public data on whether these funds are kept mostly in deposits of up to twelve months and how much is invested for a longer period of time. More important is what yields they bring. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to compare their advantages in different banks. The reason is that often the interest rate is a matter of direct negotiates with the company. The specific percentage depends on the amount and on the term for which these funds have been invested. Part of credit institutions do not publish any information on corporate deposits on their sites.
Some managers say that with credit institutions with assets of BGN4-5 billion, a one-year deposit of over BGN2 million may earn an interest of 6.5-7% annually. However, as already said, this is associated with a bunch of other conditions. Burt everything simply boils down to one thing – the client company to use the maximum number of banking services, which pay the relevant fees and commissions. The ultimate goal is of the bank is to make the company spend more money than it will be paid in interest on deposits. Otherwise, if we talk about ordinary term deposits with big banks the conditions are quite different.
For example, for a one year term deposit of company, which is never less than BGN500,000 Unicredit Bulbank gives a 3.35% annual interest. If you deposit more than 1 million a year, the interest rate will be 1.3 percent. In case the company invests the same amount in Swiss francs or dollars for the same period – the annual interest rate will be less than 1 percent.
