HSBC’s May 2025 global trade pulse survey shows that cash and liquidity management support has been the most helpful form of support in managing working capital for Asian companies during the current period of trade uncertainty, more important than improved payment terms with suppliers or customers or supply chain finance.
“Working capital has become even more important because companies need to conserve cash,” says Abhishek Chopra, Head of Global Trade Solutions, North Asia ex China at HSBC. “Over the last three-four months ahead of tariffs coming into effect, a lot of frontloading took place as companies raised their inventory levels to mitigate supply disruptions.”
Singapore-based agri-business company, Olam, almost doubled its working capital in its last financial year. Working capital represented the significant majority of invested capital growth due to sharp and persistent increases in prices of several key input raw materials (including cocoa, coffee, pepper and cashew nuts) almost all of which was reflected in higher readily marketable inventories.
Nippon Sheet Glass Company’s latest annual results show that improved working capital management absorbed the impact of a decrease in operating profit.
Akihito Okochi, Chief Financial Officer, notes that for the three months of 2025, net cash flows from operating activities were positive JPY 59.2bn on the back of a significant improvement in working capital.
Jadestone Energy, an independent upstream energy company headquartered in Singapore signed a US$30m working capital facility with a 31st December 2026 maturity.
“We have put in place a new working capital facility, resulting in liquidity at the end of April 2025 of US$142.5m – a strong position from which to continue executing our 2025 activity programme,” says Executive Chairman, Adel Chaouch.
These are just some of the Asian businesses that have found themselves needing more working capital. In an uncertain economic and trading environment, companies need to conserve cash as well as mitigate buyer risk, which is where global trade banks have an important role to play.
“We know the performance of these buyers and we help underwrite that risk ourselves,” adds Chopra. “We also provide better working capital through a receivables finance structure, for example, which from a risk management and liquidity management perspective is good for these companies.”
The survey – which interviewed 5,750 businesses from 13 markets with international operations and a turnover of between US$50m and US$2bn including Bangladesh, Hong Kong, India, mainland China, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam – also found Asian firms were on the whole more willing to evolve and explore new opportunities than their counterparts in other regions.
The vast majority of the Asian survey respondents had either already implemented supply chain visibility tools (36%) or were planning to (52%). One third had adopted automation and more than half intended to invest in automation technology.
There was also strong interest in examining large datasets to find patterns, trends and correlations that can be used to make informed decisions and improve business processes. More than four-in-ten of the Asian companies surveyed (41%) were already using enhanced data analytics and a further 47% were intending to increase their investment in this area.
However, there were some areas where businesses in Asia were less proactive. For example, only 55% had already adopted new technology or a new digital platform because of trade uncertainty (versus nearly 60% globally), while 52% said they had already improved internal efficiency or changed their cost structure compared to 56% globally.
