BOFIT Weekly Review 2016/13
Russian companies having problems in payments
Rosstat finds that the ratio of overdue payments in corporate payments has gradually risen over the past two years. The overdue rate exceeded 6 % of the total stock of payments at the end of last year. During the 2009 financial crisis, the rate of overdue payments climbed to around 8 %. Invoice payment time of companies has also increased over the past year. Based on data gathered by the business news and analysis provider Interfax, companies were paying nearly a quarter of their bills over 60 days past the due date at the end of last year. A year earlier, only 14 % of payments were as belated.
On the collections side, power utility companies in particular have complained that accumulating non-paid customer bills already cause problems for them to finance investments and pay for fuel. Gazprom has conceded that its stock of overdue outstanding payments last year rose 20 %, mainly on belated payments from power utilities and households. Overdue payments relate especially to customers that by law cannot be cut off from services even when they are seriously delinquent in paying their bills. Power utilities report e.g. that many organisations that are funded out of government budgets have ceased to pay their electricity and heating bills. The situation does not appear to have improved even with a recent amendment that allows companies to now charge higher late payment interest.
Corporate wage arrears also began to climb sharply at the beginning of 2015, although their share of the total wage payment is still less than 1 % and the volume of arrears has been even at its highest only half of what it was at the peak of the 2009 financial crisis. At the end of February, wage arrears concerned 72,000 employees with an average of about 1.5 months salary unpaid.