The Industrial Development Corporation has reported a 147% surge in disbursements to R17.8-billion for 2022/23, up from only R7.2-billion in the prior year – a performance that is within range of the R20-billion target that has eluded the development financier for several years, and which the Covid pandemic disrupted further.
However, he also highlighted efforts that had been made internally to improve transaction origination and execution, including an initiative to ensure that investment and risk teams were working more closely upfront to accelerate due diligence processes. While the public procurement renewables programme had failed to advance at the scale initially anticipated when procurement resumed in 2019, the IDC had a large pipeline of private independent power producer transactions in which it was hoping to participate.
Group profit during 2022/23, meanwhile, rose 70% to R10.7-billion from R6.3-billion in 2021/22, supported by turnarounds at both Foskor and Grinding Media, which was formerly a Scaw subsidiary. Impairments and non-performing loans also remained of concern, although the non-performing load ratio fell to 34% from 56% in the prior year.