Despite the impact of the Russian-Ukrainian war on capital markets worldwide, EGX indices saw an unprecedented rise by year-end 2022.
EGX30 index achieved an increase of 22.17% on 2022, compared to 10.18% in 2021 while EGX30 TR index reached an increase of 27.31% in 2022, compared to 13.06% in 2021. The most indicative gainer was EGX100 index increasing by 27.35% in 2022, while EGX70 index increasing by 27.26% in 2022, compared to 5.08% in 2021.
EGX ranked third after Tadawul and Abu Dhabi Exchanges in terms of trading values with total value trading to amounting USD 59 bn. The MSCI Egypt index earned 26% in Q2 2022. Market capitalization in 2022 increased significantly to a new historic level reaching EGP 961 bn, compared to EGP 765 bn last year. Total trading values reached EGP 1.084 trillion in 2022 including the trading values of listed companies, treasury bonds, over the counter (OTC) and deals.
Additionally, the largest daily number of transactions (over 109K transactions) ever recorded was during 2022. Foreign investors trading increased to 31% in 2022 compared to 21% in 2021, and institutional trading on listed companies increased to 47% in 2022 compared to 32% in 2021. Capital increases in 2022 achieved a record figure since 2016 to reach EGP 30.2 bn compared to EGP 18.4 bn in 2021, which is a significant 64% increase. Listed companies distributed cash dividends by EGP 36.3 bn in 2022, an increase of 108% compared to EGP 17.5 bn distributed during 2021.Lastly, Numbers of New investors entering the market have remarkably increased during 2022 with 175k new investors, reaching 526k investors by the end of 2022.
The outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian war on February 24, 2022 exacerbated the global supply chain crisis, made food and energy prices jumped significantly, driving inflation rates to unprecedented levels in various countries of the world.
To control unrestrained inflation, the US Federal Reserve followed a policy of monetary tightening and was followed by most central banks around the world, which negatively affected global financial markets, especially emerging markets.
The Egyptian economy was not far from the rest of the world's economies. It was subjected to two consecutive shocks, the Covid-19 crisis in 2020 and the Russian-Ukrainian war 2022; the most prominent negative repercussions of the Russian-Ukrainian war on the external situation of the Egyptian economy were as the net foreign currency reserves declined and the eco system for investment was not attraction to foreign investments.
Despite this EGX’s performance excelled in 2022 ranking third place after Tadawul and Abu Dhabi Exchanges in terms of trading values.
In 2022, significant decisions were taken related to increase liquidity. Most important of which are: Reverse execution mechanism, in order to ensure the stability of the market instead of operations cancellations.
EGX amended the listing and disclosure rules, allowing temporarily listing on EGX before register at FRA, and obliging companies with annual revenues exceeding EGP 2 bn to disclose financial statements in both Arabic and English.