Prompt payments hit one-year high in Q3: Singapore Commercial Credit Bureau

OVERALL prompt payments reached a one-year high in the third quarter of this year, data from Singapore Commercial Credit Bureau on Thursday showed. Slow payments have also reached its lowest since the first quarter of 2014.

It inched up slightly above the 50 per cent mark, up 5.08 percentage points from a year ago to 51.05 per cent. From a quarter ago, this rose by 2.58 percentage points.

Overall slow payments fell slightly by 3.04 percentage points quarter-on-quarter to 38.31 per cent in the third quarter. Over the year, it dropped 3.61 percentage points.

Prompt payments in Singapore - defined as such when at least 90 per cent of total bills are paid within the agreed payment terms - accounted for more than half of the payment transactions.

Slow payments accounted for less than two-fifths in the third quarter of this year. The latter are so classified when more than half of the total bills are paid later than the agreed credit terms.