The receivables are like oil shale. Its reserves have always been there but only recently have we acquired the necessary technology that brought it to the global market and radically changed the industry. The same will soon happen to the receivables as well, and the meaning of these groundbreaking changes will be no less significant.
And some statistics. Asian factoring volume, which declined by 8.46% in 2015, suffered another decline of 8.47% in 2016 to EUR 508 billion. This was caused mainly by China, which saw a further decline of 14.5%. However, Chinese economy is expected to grow at a new normal with a growth rate of about 6.5% for 2017. Although China continues to be the worlds second largest factoring country after The United Kingdom, its factoring growth rate is not expected to experience the high growth as seen in the past.
Japan and Taiwan, two other major Asian countries also suffered decline in volume, albeit at a lower rate 8.7% and 10.45% respectively. Nonetheless, the growth in two other major Asian factoring countries, Hong Kong (27.7%) and Singapore (4.1%) as well as interesting growth in the emerging Asian markets of Malaysia (362.7%), Thailand (20%) and Vietnam (96.4 %) helped to cushion the decline somewhat. Yet Asia continues to be the second largest factoring region accounting for 22% of the world factoring volume. Consequently, some South East Asian countries, (Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam) and India are expected to fuel the growth of factoring in Asia as there are signs of increase in factoring activity.