EQUIPMENT LEASING AND SECURED CREDIT TRANSACTIONS: THE MIX AND THE NEED FOR ALL INCLUSIVE LEGISLATION

Abstract

Businessmen, corporate bodies and even government at all levels hardly carry out most of their projects by acquiring all equipment they need for all their ventures.  There is always the need in the form of direct financing of equipment acquisition or other forms of equipment financing, the least being hiring of such equipment under hire purchase arrangement.  This central role being played by credit financing due to its enormous benefits to our economy, has led to singling out every form of credit financing, naming it distinctly and making different forms of laws as though they are not the same, and, to proliferation of laws that brings confusion to practitioners instead of clarity of practice required in every law.  The passing of Equipment Leasing Act in 2015 and subsequent passage of Secured Credit in Moveable Assets Act, 2017 are the most recent of this.  This paper examined equipment leasing and secured credit transactions to see whether they are one and the same type of transaction but looked at from different perspectives.  The paper concludes that equipment leasing is but a form of secured credit transaction, and makes recommendation for an all-inclusive law of secured credit transactions that will satisfy all forms of credit financing.