The Financial Regulatory Authority’s (FRA) strategy until 2022 aims to increase the number of companies listed on the Egyptian Exchange (EGX) to reach 275 firms, and increase the market capital to EGP 1.6tn, Khaled El Nashar, vice chairperson of FRA, announced.
He added that the strategy also seeks to increase the number of beneficiaries of micro funding to 4 million, compared to the current 2.8 million. It also aims to increase the size of that market to EGP 15bn, compared to EGP 11.5bn now.
According to El Nashar, the financial leasing market grew by 46% on an annual basis in 2018, reaching EGP 41.7bn, compared to EGP 28.6bn in 2017, and EGP 6bn in 2013.
He added that the size of micro funding grew by 62% on an annual basis, achieving EGP 11.5bn in 2018, compared to EGP 7.1bn in 2017.
Regarding laws and regulations governing non-banking financial services, El Nashar stressed that the Consumer Finance Law is in the preparation stage to be applied soon on institutions with an annual financing volume of EGP 25m, and it will not allow monetary lending. Additionally, a law will be prepared for the independence of the authority.
This came during the conference organized by HC Securities, within the framework of providing corporate access services to its clients from financial institutions investing in the EGX, in order to provide more details on the operations and financial performance of the non-banking financial services sector (NBFS).
During the conference, the company discussed several NBFS such as money markets, microfinance, insurance, consumer finance, factoring, financial leasing, and real estate financing. It also discussed the challenges facing these services as well as the opportunities to expand in this market.
The meetings resulted in several recommendations, including the need to cooperate with Egyptian banks to facilitate the real estate finance process, as well as the fact that automation is key toward success in microfinance, as well as tightening internal controls which govern the labour force of companies operating in this field, and not relying on price wars because of their adverse impact on the microfinance market.
