Once again,a surfeit of worrying news this month. Poor payment practice is an ongoing theme, with the NSCC appealing to government to intervene on the new practice of reverse factoring and a cross-party group of MPs examining the economic impact of late payment. Meanwhile, the Prompt Payment Code, with its commitment that signatories stick to "contract" terms -even if those happen to be 60 days -increasingly looks like a PR-led panacea. When the downturn started to bite, we saw an epidemic of Tier 1 contractors writing to supply chain members demanding better terms. Four years of austerity later, there's a feeling that Tier 1 s long ago squeezed out any surplus value -and that they're now resorting to extended payment times, pay when paid and/or the new option of Supply Chain Finance to improve their own beleaguered margins.
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