← Business Metric: Industry Specific (Industrials & Materials) (all topics)
Working capital - state agency receivables
What it is
Payment delays from state governments, municipal bodies and utilities that buy through scheme-funded tenders. Approval chains, fund release from central schemes and local budget positions all sit between delivery and payment
The supplier funds the gap
Impact on industries
- Working capital is consumed by exactly the orders that drive revenue growth, so scheme-led expansion can be cash-negative while profitable
- Delays are outside the supplier's control and unrelated to performance, since the constraint is the buyer's fiscal position
- Small and mid-size suppliers are worst affected, since they lack the balance sheet to carry receivables across scheme cycles
- Central scheme funding with direct transfer mechanisms shortens the chain relative to purely state-funded procurement