In the midst of strong business performance and favorable economic outlook, Singapore-based companies have shown significant improvements in their payment patterns over the past one year.

Latest data released by Dun & Bradstreet Singapore show that in June 2007, about 46% of the Singapore-based companies paid their suppliers promptly. This is an improvement of 12 percentage points compared to a year ago. At the same, the proportion of companies that were slow in payment has reduced from 51% to 40% over the same period. << read more >>

Credit Advisory Unit (CAU) believes that SME development efforts are now further challenged by fiercer regional and global competition, rapid changes in technological and increased sophisticated, demanding and constantly changing consumer preferences and market requirements. Furthermore, there are other pressing issues for policy attention as well.

Another common issue raised by CAU is SME financing, which has been and will remain perennial issue. Many financial support measures for SMEs have limited outreach at disparate cost. Criteria for and terms of financing appears to be rewarding those enterprises with a certain scalable size and good management practices, especially for those jurisdictions with established credit bureaus.             << read more >>

Managing cash flow and liquidity risk is a major activity that SMEs need to focus more, especially when they are embarking on growth strategies. A greater balancing act needs to be undertaken between making sure all obligations are paid on time, doing everything to collect cash as quickly as possible, and not holding excessive cash balances. These points were emphasized and reiterated by Credit Advisory Unit (CAU),a JV unit between Evolve Maximus Pte Ltd and Dun & Bradstreet Singapore Pte Ltd. In this regard, an understanding of cash flow cycle is an important first step in managing cash flows. The basic rule in managing the cycle is that SMEs want to lengthen the disbursement cycle and shorten the receipt cycle. Controlling float times is a common way of adjusting cash flow cycle times.  << read more >>

14^th September 2007 holds an event held by Dun & Bradstreet in relevance to the ‘Top 1000 Performing Companies in Asia Pacific 2006’ publication, a networking event by ABN AMRO Bank. For this event, D&B had invited personnel of executive level from companies in Singapore and Malaysia that were ranked in the 2006 publication and other key industry players. They formed the main essence of this networking event. D&B hopes to allow personnel coming from these different successful companies to network as well as share their experiences. This event had lucratively drawn in individuals nearing a hundred for the evening. << read more >>