Bahrain Legal interest on commercial debts
Bahrain Legal interest on commercial debts: no single figure applies. The reason is set out below, cited to the governing instrument. Last checked against the official source on 10 Aug 2026.
Bahrain's Law of Commerce entitles a creditor to delay interest on commercial debts at 'the legally applicable rate', but leaves that rate to be fixed by the central bank by notice — and no notice fixing a legal rate is published, so no number can be served.
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| Current value | structured — see the API |
|---|---|
| In force from | — |
| Official source | Law of Commerce (Decree-Law No. 7 of 1987) Art. 76(4): 'Interest shall be calculated at the legally applicable rate unless a different rate is agreed upon, provided it shall not exceed the legally prescribed limits'; Art. 76(5): 'The Bahrain Monetary Agency shall, by a notice issued from time to time, determine the legal rate and the maximum rate of interest provided for in the preceding paragraph'; Art. 81(1) (as amended by Legislative Decree No. 4 of 1992): 'Interest for delay of payment of commercial debts shall accrue upon maturity of such debts, unless the law or the agreement provides otherwise' |
| Last verified | 2026-08-10 |
| Verification | primary — No verification limitation recorded — read from the official source cited. |
| Provenance | source fingerprint |
What this value means
REFUSAL ON THE NUMBER — the entitlement exists but the rate is empty. Art. 76(4) of the Law of Commerce points to 'the legally applicable rate', and Art. 76(5) hands the job of fixing both that legal rate and the maximum rate to the BAHRAIN MONETARY AGENCY — whose functions passed to the CENTRAL BANK OF BAHRAIN under the CBB and Financial Institutions Law (Law No. 64 of 2006) — 'by a notice issued from time to time'. No such notice fixing a legal rate is published, so there is no statutory figure to serve and none should be inferred from the CBB's monetary policy rate, which is a different instrument entirely. WHAT IS SETTLED: a loan taken by a merchant for his business is a commercial loan (Art. 76(1)) and is PRESUMED interest-bearing unless a contrary intention is proved (Art. 76(2)); a merchant who advances money or pays expenses for a customer may claim interest from the date of payment (Art. 76(3)); interest falls due at the end of each year for debts longer than a year and on maturity for shorter ones (Art. 76(6)); delay interest on a commercial debt runs from maturity without more (Art. 81(1)); and the creditor may claim complementary damages on top of the delay interest without having to prove the excess loss came from the debtor's fraud or gross negligence (Art. 81(4)). HARD CAP ON THE TOTAL: Art. 81(2) — the total interest the creditor charges may not exceed the principal on which it is calculated, for debts with a repayment period not exceeding seven years, and any stipulation to the contrary is null and void. Art. 81(3) disapplies that cap to debts contracted in foreign currency. In practice the operative rate is therefore the CONTRACT rate, subject to that ceiling. CIVIL DEBTS DIFFER: under the Civil Law (Legislative Decree No. 19 of 2001) the parties may fix compensation in advance only where the obligation is NOT the payment of a sum of money (Art. 225), and the court may adjust agreed damages to the actual loss (Art. 226) — so a creditor outside the commercial sphere is left to proved damages, not a rate. Retrieval note: Bahrain's Legislation and Legal Opinion Commission portal is unreliable for automated retrieval; the consolidated English text of the Law of Commerce as amended to Decree-Law No. 51 of 2018 is mirrored on WIPO Lex at the URL cited.
Get it programmatically
curl https://mearef.dev/v1/bh/statutory-interest
# $0.005 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History: curl https://mearef.dev/v1/bh/statutory-interest/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://mearef.dev/provenance/bh/statutory-interestOther Bahrain series: CBB Key Policy Rate · Value-added tax (VAT) · VAT registration threshold · Statutory national minimum wage · Official public holidays · Consumer Price Index (latest month) · General corporate income tax rate · Withholding tax rates · Personal income tax · Statutory social-insurance contributions
The same figure elsewhere: Iraq · Israel · Jordan · Kuwait · Oman · all 9