Road hauliers argue that the period of quarantine restrictions from customers plummeted payment — the average payment is delayed for 60 days. It mostly concerns small and medium-sized businesses, and now the industry Association is asking the state Duma to legally limit the time limit for payment for work done in 15 days. Large companies are also seeing an increase in requests for a deferral, however, I see that the situation is changing for the better with the removal of restrictions. The regulatory payment period and they are mostly positive.Association “Sheer logistics” appealed to the state Duma with the request legislatively to limit to 15 days the maximum period of deferred payment has been implemented, the freight for which there are no claims to quality. Now, reports in a letter to the Chairman of the Duma Committee on financial markets Anatoly Aksakov who heads the initiative of General Director of “Cargocenter.Ru” Edgar Greenberg, has developed in the market of discriminatory lending customers by transport companies from SME segment “by unregulated increase in terms of payment”. The situation worsened during the period of quarantine restrictions: according ATI.su in March the number of claims from carriers for non-payment of transport increased by 15.2% in April to 27.9% compared to the same months of 2019. The average payment delay has increased to 60 working days, they say “Sheer logistics”. Now in public procurement, the customer is legally obliged to pay SMEs within 15 days, and the carriers propose to extend this concept to other contracts.President of the Association “Gruzavtotrans” Mr Mityagin says that the trend towards “lending” of customers at the expense of the carriers there for a long time and is most pronounced in the construction sector. So, according to him, the Association in may wrote to the presidential administration of the Russian Federation with a request to investigate non-payment for delivery of materials to the site canceled the construction of the Supreme court building in St. Petersburg, in March, addressed to the President on a similar issue with the contractors for the construction of the Central ring. At the same time, says Mr. Matawan, in terms of the quarantine, the problem got worse: customers hide behind the fact that they have problems with financing, however, because few orders, actually blackmailing the carriers.Large companies are also seeing an increase in requests for deferred payments. General Director of GC “Business lines” Farid Madani notes that many customers have faced deficiency of liquidity and has requested a delay, as banks raised interest rates and reduced funding. “The trend is clear — speculation on a situation from a position of strength,” says the CEO of the company “point to Point” Artem Marchuk, noting that carriers in��is situated to close the cash gap from other sources. Agree with him and the management of the Moscow branch of AsstrA GK Tatiana Goncharenko. She adds that, nevertheless, the company “often willing to accept contractual conditions of our customers, including the increase in terms of payments”. Cases of delayed payment has really increased in the period of restrictions, says the head of the Russian forwarding “Dachser” Alex Cherkashin: “Clients are pushing for delay of payments up to 60-90 days. On this background the delay in payment be disastrous.”As explained “Kommersant” in peck, in the period of limitations 80% of customers who have deferred, have been asked to increase it, for two months overdue receivables of the company increased by 40-50% compared to the same period of 2019. “But as soon as June 1, launched the first phase of the removal of restrictions, we saw improvement in the situation,— said the commercial Director of PEK Andrei Seregin.— For customers important was the fact of receiving information about the fact that they can work. And, even before the receipt of the money, they started to pay. The second wave, we expect the refunds from those customers who have payment tied to revenue”. Effective measures of state support in the current conditions could be a reduction in credit rates and regulation of terms of payment. But, according to Andrey Seregin, it is necessary that the period of delay of payment from industry to industry, have been differentiated: “for example, for food retail, the delay may be short, for consumer goods it can be greater for the segment of fashion even more.”Natalia Skorlygina
