Does trade credit facilitate access to bank finance? : empirical evidence from South Africa

Abstract

The earlier theories considered trade credit as a substitute for bank credit. Recent theories suggest that bank credit and trade credit can also be considered as two complementary sources of financing. By using South African panel data from 2007 to 2015, the study examines if the problem of financial inclusion in South Africa can be mitigated by utilising trade credit data. The empirical findings using trade credit at current period are consistent with the earlier theories of trade credit that trade credit and bank credit are substitutes, but the model was not robust to estimation techniques. The study also used the lagged trade credit as a variable of interest and found that it is positively related to bank credit. This means that the trade credit data from the previous period can facilitate access to bank credit. Therefore, the information from trade credit can serve as a signal about firms’ quality and thus facilitates access to bank finance.