The Kremikovtzi mill has orders from clients in Romania, Turkey, Greece and Italy but is unable to fulfill these due to the restrictions of the insolvency procedure, union leader Vassil Yanachkov said Monday.

In its present shape the company is capable of putting out some 30,000 t of metal a month. It has received orders for a total of 50,000 t. Demand from Bulgarian users have declined dramatically, said Yanachkov.

Yanachkov's Confederation of Independent Trade Unions expect the Finance Ministry to say within a week whether or not Kremikovtzi's liabilities to public creditors can be rescheduled as provided for in a proposed recovery plan.

The recovery plan was sumitted to the court on January 8 and its decision is expected before January 18.

If the Finance Minister does not allow a rescheduling of liabilities for a total of some 900 million leva, the court is very much likely to make a decision to prompt start of bankruptcy procedure, said Yanachkov. By law, the court is required to communicate a bankruptcy decision with all creditors, including individual creditors, which will take several months. The bankruptcy decision may then be contested, in which case the procedure will have to be repeated and take another six to eight months.

For this reason, the unions insist that the government should support the recovery plan.

Source: BTA