Business delinquencies skyrocketed 42% in the first quarter, to 349,000 million, according to Cepyme

MADRID, 16 Ago. (EUROPA PRESS) -

Business delinquencies in Spain increased three points in the first quarter of the year compared to the previous quarter, its biggest quarterly rise in 12 years, according to the Cepyme Synthetic Indicator of Business Delinquencies (ISME), created in 2010 to measure the evolution of delinquencies through the average payment period.

This increase is the result of both the increase in invoices with late payment and the extension of payment periods, as explained by Cepyme.

Thus, commercial debt with late payment reached 73.3% of the total in the first quarter, 3.6 points more than in the previous quarter, reaching 348,992 million euros, 42% more than in the same period from the previous year.

"The slowdown in the recovery of the Spanish economy and the adverse impact of inflation on business accounts continue to negatively affect the evolution of business delinquencies," says Cepyme in its Observatory on delinquencies, prepared in collaboration with Cesce and Informa.

For its part, the average payment period rose in the first quarter to an average of 83.9 days, compared to 81.4 days in the previous quarter and 82.6 days in the first quarter of 2021.

Cepyme stresses that this increase is largely due to the slowdown in the economy, affected by the escalation of prices and the consequences of the conflict in Ukraine, which is having "negative effects on the economic recovery and directly reducing the liquidity of companies ".

"Companies are not transmitting all of their cost increases to the end customer and this translates into a shrinking cash flow, which affects the ability to pay suppliers. In fact, a growing number of companies recognize this problem and is negotiating with its suppliers an extension of the payment terms", affirms the employers' association of SMEs.

The business organization's forecasts for the coming months are negative, since it estimates that the tensions in energy prices will continue at least until next spring and the general rises in costs will imply "additional pressure on business margins", which will increase the risk of non-payment or delay in meeting obligations.

All of this, he recalls, in a context of uncertainty, in which the decision of the central banks to curb inflation will translate into higher financing costs and tougher conditions, which will complicate the possibility of accessing external financing to face treasury gaps.

According to Cepyme, the delay in the payment of invoices especially affects smaller companies, which have greater difficulties in accessing credit and which suffer more especially from delinquency as their customer base is more concentrated.

Thus, micro-enterprises recorded the largest year-on-year increase in their average payment period (PMP) in the first quarter, 7.9 days more, standing at 87.6 days, becoming the companies that take the longest to pay.

Small companies increased their average payment period by 0.6 days in the first quarter, to 83.5 days, while medium-sized companies cut it by the same proportion, from 84.7 to 84.1 days.

By branch of activity, construction and real estate development, together with the textile sector, remain the activities with the greatest delays in payment, reaching 98.4 and 90.4 days on average, respectively.

It also highlights the evolution of the average payment period of the agri-food industry, which in the first quarter rose 8.2 days in year-on-year terms, to 80.7 days, due to the breakdown of several global supply chains.

In contrast, the food distribution and wood and furniture sectors have been the activities with the least delays in their payments in the first quarter of this year, with average periods of 65 and 77.4 days, respectively.

During the first quarter, Murcia was the autonomous community with the longest average payment period, a total of 96 days, almost three more than in the previous quarter but 0.5 days less than a year earlier.

The autonomous communities that registered the greatest interannual increase in business delinquencies were Aragón (7.2 days), Castilla y León (6.6 days) and Canarias (4.6 days).

On the contrary, the communities that have registered a greater year-on-year drop in their average payment periods have been Cantabria (-23.3 days), Extremadura (-6.8 days) and the Basque Country (-3.8 days).