According to the Singapore Commercial Credit Bureau, Singapore employers are lagging behind in payments and payment performance have reached a 5-year-low. Less than half of the total payments transactions were prompt and over 40% are slow in payments. This trend affects all five industries, naming construction, manufacturing, retail, services and wholesale.
In the latest quarter Q4, only 45.87% of the payment transactions are prompt while slow payments accounts for 45.87%. The trend suggests that Singapore employers might be facing cash flow problems and hence not able to meet payment deadlines.
The news comes no surprise as Singapore’s economy is weakening with unemployment figures hitting 3% for citizens in the first half of 2016 while redundancies and lay-offs hit a 7-year-high. However there has been some respite in the most recent quarterly GDP result Q4, with a growth of 1.8% bringing an overall growth of only 1.8%.
While Singapore avoided a technical recession, it remains the poorest performing country in Asia. A recent survey conducted by Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) reported that the Singapore dollar will likely to weaken further and that the current declining state of the economy will worsen in 2017.