Aruanded

21.5% respondents in Singapore versus 17.4% in Asia Pacific consider a likely drop in demand for their products and services as the biggest challenge to business profitability in 2015.

32.5% of respondents in Taiwan compared to 25.8% in Asia Pacific said that domestic B2B customers pay invoices late most often due to disputes over the quality of goods delivered or services provided.

Global trade growth has slowed significantly in recent years. For 2015, Atradius predicts just 1% international trade growth. This implies a difficult environment for exporters.

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.

Due to Brazil’s economic slump and problems along the whole domestic automotive value chain we expect both payment delays and defaults to continue to worsen markedly in the coming months.

Despite the current slowdown the Chinese car market still provides robust growth potential.

After subsequent years of production decreases French subcontractors and suppliers have benefited from the rebound of the French and the European automotive sector.

Like other Spanish industries, the automotive sector was hard hit by the economic crisis, as lower domestic consumption and difficulty accessing financing led to a slump in the car market.

A major strength of the British car manufacturing industry is its diversity, with a mix of volume, premium and specialist producers.

In the period January 2015 - August 2015 domestic car production and exports both grew 2%, while new car registrations in Germany rose 6%.

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.

Japanese automotive businesses´profit margins have generally improved, mainly due to higher sales in North America.

In Slovakia, payment behaviour is generally good with a low number of non-payment notificiations, and this is expected to remain unchanged in the coming months.

Payment behaviour in the Swedish automotive sector is quite stable, and insolvencies are not expected to increase in the coming months.

Thailand´s automotive sectors is characterised by high entry barriers as the players in the market are large multinationals with strong financials and good know-how.

Payment behaviour in the US automotive sector has been rather good over the past two years.

Economic growth in the resource-rich Brazil continues to remain under pressure due to a combination of a credit crunch, rising interest rates and weakening demand.

One in three businesses surveyed in Brazil, Canada, Mexico and the United States reported that around one-fifth of the value of their B2B receivables is more than 90 days overdue.

Inflation is expected to remain high in 2015, at around 7%, while the current account deficit is expected to remain at the same level as in 2014 (5.7% of GDP).

The Polish economy is expected to benefit from low energy prices and the rebound in the Eurozone, with GDP expected to grow 3.5% in 2015, based on robust domestic demand and increasing exports.