Local firms payment performance has rebounded in the first quarter of 2019 following three consecutive quarters of decline, the Singapore Commercial Credit Bureau said on Tuesday.LOCAL firms payment performance rebounded in the first quarter of 2019 following three consecutive quarters of decline, except for the construction sector, the Singapore Commercial Credit Bureau said on Tuesday.
On a quarter-on-quarter basis, prompt payments increased by 7.87 percentage points to 51.70 per cent in Q1 2019, from 43.83 per cent the quarter before.Slow payments decreased by 1.43 percentage points to 36.59 per cent, from 38.02 per cent the quarter before.Meanwhile, partial payments fell by 6.44 percentage points to 11.71 per cent in the first quarter, from 18.15 per cent the quarter before.
“The rebound in payment performance should come as no surprise given that slow payments have been on a decline since Q4 2018," said Ms. Audrey Chia, D&B Singapore’s chief executive officer. The construction sector saw slow payments worsen in Q1 2019 after four straight quarters of improvement. Its slow payments rose 4.49 percentage points q-o-q to 47.72 per cent, from 43.23 per cent in Q4 2018. Y-o-y, slow payments decreased by 1.42 percentage points to 47.72 per cent.