SINGAPORE: The payment performance of Singapore firms unexpectedly worsened in the first three months of this year after a small improvement in the fourth quarter of 2014 (Q4 2014), according to Singapore Commercial Credit Bureau’s (SCCB) latest report.
Overall prompt payments tumbled significantly by 11.02 percentage points to 39.04 per cent in the first quarter of this year from 50.07 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2014.
This marks the lowest prompt payments made in nearly three years since Q2 2012, when prompt payments registered 37.3 per cent. On a year-on-year (y-o-y) basis, prompt payments also fell by 12.88 percentage points from 51.92 per cent in Q1 2014 to 39.04 per cent in Q1 2015.
Less than two-fifths of payment transactions were prompt while payment delays made up slightly more than half of the payment transactions in Q1 2015. In contrast, Q4 2014 saw prompt payments form nearly half of the payment transactions, and slow payments less than 40 per cent of payment transactions.
