Publications

Costa Rica’s GDP growth is expected to accelerate driven by private consumption, robust private, public and foreign investment, and further export growth.

Mexico seems to be quite resilient in dealing with the uncertainty brought by the NAFTA renegotiations due to its strong economic fundamentals.

Panama´s economy is small, very open, highly diversified, fully dollarized and highly competitive by regional standards. However, challenges remain.

The US administration´s trade policy remains a downside risk, not just for trading partners, but also for the US economy itself.

The economic recovery in emerging market economies is expected to continue strengthening in 2018 and these markets could present opportunities for business.

The International Debt Collections Handbook is a key tool for businesses when it comes to making decisions concerning collections in foreign countries.

Global economic momentum, which began picking up in H2 of 2016, has solidified through the year. However, now is not a time for complacency.

Overcapacity remains the main challenge, as the rebalancing of the economy from investment and export-driven growth towards private consumption continues.

Revenues of the engineering services industry have rebounded since 2015 as greater liquidity in financial markets helped to boost construction spending.

While UK business insolvencies are forecast to increase in 2017 and 2018, the machinery sector is not expected to follow this deteriorating trend.

Lower demand from key buyer industries and high overcapacity has led to decreasing net profit margins for some businesses over the last two years.

Profit margins have increased over the last 12 months due to the benign business environment, however, a slight decline cannot be ruled out in the future.

Profit margins of machinery businesses rebounded in 2016 and are expected to improve further, but competition remains strong in the domestic market.

As competition is fierce in the domestic market price wars cannot be ruled out, particularly among businesses operating in the lower quality segment.

Key success factors for Danish machinery businesses remains their ability to streamline costs and investment in product development/new technology.

The general outlook remains positive, and margins are relatively high, especially in niche segments. However,competition from China is increasing.

Payment behaviour has been good over the last two years and the number of payment delays, defaults and insolvencies is expected to remain low in 2017.

Due to deteriorated results and margins, as well as increased payment delays and insolvencies our underwriting stance remains restrictive for the sector.

After a minor decrease from 45.0% in 2015 to 44.3% in 2016, the percentage of overdue B2B invoices in Asia Pacific increased again this year to 45.4%.

China’s proportion of domestic and foreign past due B2B invoices is almost in line with the regional average and has increased compared to last year.