More Singapore Firms are Late with Payments

The promptness with which Singapore-based firms pay their suppliers are other bills deteriorated unexpectedly in the first three months of this year, reversing an improvement recorded in the fourth quarter of 2014.

Fewer than two in five payments were prompt and more than half were delayed according to the latest payment statistics from the Singapore Commercial Credit Bureau (SCCB), which is part of consultancy Dun & Bradstreet (D&B) Singapore.

Describing the Q115 performance as “an unprecedented turn for the worse”, the SCCB said that overall, prompt payments fell 11.03 percentage points from 50.07% in Q414 to 39.04% in Q115. The latest reading marks the lowest level in nearly three years since Q212 when prompt payments registered 37.3%.

Slow payments – where more than 50% of total bills are paid later than the agreed credit terms – rose by 12.52 percentage points from 38.89% in Q414 to 51.41% in Q115.

All five industries tracked by the SCCB experienced an increase in the proportion of slow payments quarter on quarter, with the manufacturing sector overtaken the construction sector in registering the highest proportion of slow payments.

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