Treasury Priorities for Multinational Corporations - Middle East and Africa

10 | Treasury Priorities for Multinational Corporations This centralization allows multinational corporations (MNCs) to enhance efficiency, visibility, and control over their regional financial operations enabling effective cash pooling and liquidity management across diverse markets before global repatriation. Citi supports this trend by providing integrated digital solutions. For example, companies leverage Citi’s cash concentration services and Payment Factory solutions to optimize liquidity and streamline high-volume transactions from a central point. The foundation for these RTCs is a robust digital platform like CitiDirect BE®, which offers a single-window view for managing accounts, payments, and risk. This empowers treasury teams tomove from a transactional role to a strategic one, using data-driven insights tomitigate risk and drive growth across the complex MEA landscape. Key treasury goals in MEA For treasury professionals operating in the dynamic MEA region, achieving clear cash visibility and accurate forecasting stands as a paramount objective. This is driven by the critical need for precise liquidity planning in an environment characterized by external pressures such as geopolitical shifts, diverse regulations, and significant currency fluctuations, which frequently result in trapped cash. Despite this imperative, treasurers often face considerable operational hurdles in establishing a single, consolidated view of their cash positions. These challenges stem from fragmented banking ecosystems, the necessity of managing relationships with multiple local banks, and a pervasive lack of data standardization across various financial institutions and countries. To mitigate some of these complexities and ensure seamless liquidity operations, optimizing liquidity management is essential. This involves ingesting information and centralizing cash across multiple banking providers to effectively support daily funding requirements and enable the strategic utilization of consolidated cash. Automated cash pooling solutions offer a robust mechanism to facilitate this, providing an efficient way to manage liquidity across different currencies, geographies, and entities. Citi understands this pressing need and offers comprehensive solutions to help treasurers achieve their liquidity objectives. For further insights into establishing robust liquidity structures, we also recommend consulting our paper on “Designing the Optimal Cash Pool” . Key treasury goals in MEA Cash visibility and Cash Forecasting accuracy Enhancing treasury controls and risk management Trapped Cash Diligence/Repatriation Optimizing liquiditymanagement (Pooling/Sweeping) Reduction of DSO (Days Sales Outstanding) Increase of DPO (Days Payables Outstanding) Financial Risk Management (FX, Interest Rate, Commodity) Digitizing accounts payables and receivables processes More efficient funding Implementing Treasury Technology 53% 50% 41% 35% 28% 25% 24% 19% 18% 13%