CBE eases debt repayment terms for financially distressed companies: The Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) will renegotiate debt repayment terms with individual companies seeking help through its initiative to support financially distressed firms, according to an official release (pdf). The CBE is scrapping a condition under the initiative requiring companies to pay 20% of their debts before June and 50% before the end of 2020, and will agree new repayment periods with each company according to its financial situation. "Discussions [with banks and companies] revealed that customers need to adjust payment periods and rates in order to properly save them from defaulting," the CBE said.

Financial leasing and factoring companies send a list of defaulters for CBE aid: Fifty-four leasing and factoring companies have sent data of their troubled clients to the Financial Regulatory Authority (FRA) and the CBE to seek debt relief help, Egyptian Factoring Association Chairman Gamal Muharram told Al Mal. An FRA committee is looking to pen criteria for choosing the customers who have defaulted for reasons beyond their control, excluding mismanagement, to help them recover by seeking help from the banking sector by including them in CBE's initiative to reschedule debt.

Background: The CBE had launched an initiative in December to exempt nearly 5.2k factories from accrued interest payments halt legal action against struggling factories to help boost medium sized domestic manufacturing. Since then, the CBE has waived EGP 48.5 bn-worth of debt and interest payments and tens of companies have submitted applications to receive this aid. The FRA had set up last month a committee to assess how non-banking financial services companies can be brought into the initiative.