The cover policy which Atradius Dutch State Business maintains for a particular country is in principle valid for every transaction for that country which it is requested to insure.
Natural gas prices have fallen significantly in Asia and Europe on the back of the sliding oil price. As more LNG comes on the market regional prices are set to remain low.
Nearly half of the respondents in Australia said that the risk of payment delay and default from B2B buyers has increased over the past six months. One in five respondents rated it as “significant”.
62.0% of the businesses surveyed in China (compared to 46.3% in Asia Pacific) reported that domestic B2B customers have slowed invoice payment due to liquidity problems over the past year.
Russia remains an important market in the global economy. The ten principles of the report are meant to help businesses mitigate risks when exporting to Russia.
Thanks to the strong recovery seen since H2 of 2014 many of Italy’s car suppliers have registered increasing profit margins and an improvement of their financial strength.
Structural overcapacity in the industry had a negative effect on businesses´ profit margins in 2014, and this negative trend is expected to continue in 2015.
The outlook for the machinery industry is promising, as the Italian economy is expected to grow 0.6% in 2015 and 0.9% in 2016 after two years of contraction.
German chemicals/pharmaceuticals businesses have a strong market position, and many are highly specialised. The industry has a well-deserved reputation for innovation and a competitive edge.
Despite the significant amount of time given B2B customers to pay their invoices, a sizeable proportion of the total value of domestic B2B receivables in Turkey (55.2%) was overdue.
33% of survey respondents in Sweden (compared to 20% in Western Europe) consider a fall in demand for their products and services as one of the greatest challenges to business profitability in 2015.