13187 (2024). Helen White to the Minister for Small Business and Manufacturing

13187 (2024). Helen White to the Minister for Small Business and Manufacturing: Since the Minister led the repeal of the Business Payment Practices Act 2023 on 5 March 2024, what work has he done to improve payment times for small businesses to the week of 20 May 2024?

Hon Andrew Bayly: Work I have underway to improve payment times for small businesses includes: - requiring government departments to proactively publish their payment times, and provide an explanation when they don’t meet their payment time targets - developing a proposal to introduce a 5-day payment time target, over and above government departments’ existing 10-day target for all invoices - with my colleague Hon Melissa Lee (who is responsible for the Government Procurement Rules), developing a proposal to use the Rules to apply these two payment time targets to a wider range of Crown agencies - working with Business NZ on a voluntary commitment around payment times that all NZ businesses can sign up to - liaising with the Commerce Commission to better understand any roadblocks to them making use of the Fair Trading Act’s unfair contract provisions.