China has a US$590 billion receivables problem as payments slow

New York

NOT since 1999 have China's companies had so much trouble getting customers to actually pay for what they have bought.

It now takes about 83 days for the typical Chinese firm to collect cash for completed sales, almost twice as long as emerging-market peers. As payment delays spread from the industrial sector to technology and consumer companies, accounts receivable at the nation's public firms have swelled by 23 per cent over the past two years to about US$590 billion, exceeding the annual economic output of Taiwan.