Leasing fell by 9.8 per cent, year-on-year, to LE33.23 billion between January and April 2024, down from LE36.34 billion in the same period a year earlier, according to data from the Financial Regulatory Authority (FRA).
The number of leasing contracts fell by 10 per cent, year-on-year, to 569 in the January-April period, down from 636 in the corresponding period in 2023. Real estate and land accounted for 76.7 per cent of leasing contracts in the January-April period, while trucks accounted for 5.9 per cent, according to FRA data.
Machinery and heavy equipment snatched 4.8 and 3.4 per cent of leasing contracts respectively.
Leasing can provide manufacturing SMEs with adequate funding to get expensive machinery without purchasing them.
Factoring jumps 26.2% in May
Factoring jumped by 26.2 per cent, year-on-year, to LE20.35 billion in May 2024, up from LE16.13 billion in the same month a year earlier, according to FRA data.
Recourse factoring jumped by 23.5 per cent, year-on-year, to LE3.57 billion in May, up from LE2.89 billion in May 2023. In recourse factoring, a customer has to reimburse the factoring company if the debtor customer doesn’t pay their bill.
Non-recourse factoring edged up 6.2 per cent, year-on-year, to LE1.83 billion in May, against LE1.72 billion in the same month a year ago, according to FRA data.
Global M&A deals jump 11.7% in H1
Despite global merger and acquisition(M&A) deal volumes remaining lackluster, the total value of global M&A has jumped year-over-year in the first half (H1) of 2024, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence’s Q2 2024 Global M&A and Equity Offerings Report.
The total value of transactions increased 11.7 per cent to $1.22 trillion through 2024 H1 compared to 2023 H1, but the number of deals was down 12.9 per cent to 19,415 over the same time period.
“The activity shows that M&A has yet to fully recover from the slowdown in activity that started in 2022 with the rate-hiking cycle, but dealmakers are willing to pursue large transactions. In the second quarter of this year, a pickup in $10 billion-plus M&A announcements outside the US helped ensure that the total value of global deals recorded its third straight quarter of year-over-year growth,” said the S&P Global report, a copy of which was made available to the Egyptian Mail.
Afreximbank plans to double financing to $40b
African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) plans to double its financing of intra-African trade from $20 billion in 2021 to $40 billion by 2026.
Haytham el-Maayergi, Afreximbank’s Executive Vice President, said the pan-African bank had been a champion in facilitating intra-African trade since its founding and that it had committed $1 billion to support the funding of the AfCFTA Adjustment Fund and a $10-million grant to facilitate the establishment and operationalization of that fund.
Afreximbank is a pan-African multilateral financial institution mandated to finance and promote intra-and extra-African trade. For 30 years, the bank has been deploying innovative structures to deliver financing solutions that support the transformation of the structure of Africa’s trade, accelerating industrialization and intra-regional trade, thereby boosting economic expansion in Africa.
Afreximbank is also partnering with the AfCFTA Secretariat and the African Union Commission (AUC) to ensure a successful implementation of the Pan-African Payments and Settlements System, the African Trade Gateway and the Afreximbank African Collaborative Transit Guarantee Scheme.
