Utilities firms take longest to pay bills
Auckland firms, bigger companies and the utilities sector are the slowest to pay their bills.
New data from Dun & Bradstreet shows New Zealand businesses are having to wait longer to have their bills paid, although the overall rate of late payments is near historical lows.
On average, payments that were not made on time by New Zealand businesses were late by 6.2 days. That is down from 16.1 in the second quarter of 2011.
‘‘An interesting aspect of the payment times of firms is that 79.5 per cent of firms pay their bills promptly,’’ Dun & Bradstreet adviser Stephen Koukoulas said.
‘‘A further 15 per cent of firms pay their bills within 1 to 30 days, reflecting the strong cash flow position of most businesses.
‘‘While just 2.7 per cent of bills take more than 60 days to pay, these are the bills that run the risk of damaging the finances of the creditor companies and if this rises it would pose some threat to overall economic conditions.’’
Companies with 500 staff or more had a late payment time of 9.9 days compared with 6.6 for companies with one to five staff, the data showed.
‘‘The moderate lift in late payment times in the last few quarters has been across firms of all sizes,’’ Koukoulas said.
‘‘Prior to the more general rise in late payments, larger companies started to extend their payment times. This trend has continued in recent quarters and smaller firms continue to have the lowest rate of late payments.’’
The agricultural industry had the fastest payment time and the utilities sector the slowest.
Utilities firms reported payments that were late by an average of 10.1 days, compared with 6.4 days at the same time last year.
The communications sector had dropped from 8.2 to 5.5 days.
Payment times were slowest in Auckland. Koukoulas said that was affected by the large number of big companies with their headquarters located there.
Koukoulas said the data did not ask companies why bills were late.
He said the utilities sector could have been affected by a slight slowing in the economy.
He said while wages and unemployment were not yet problematic, New Zealanders might be worried about their pay. That could lead to an increase in problems paying the power bill.