Johannesburg — THE International Finance Corporation (IFC) is giving Standard Bank a $400m line of credit to help unblock trade in Africa, which has been constrained by the global financial crisis and credit crunch.

The announcement, made simultaneously at the G-20 summit in London and in Johannesburg, forms part of a $50bn trade financing programme announced by World Bank president Robert Zoellick on Tuesday.

IFC director for eastern and southern Africa, Jean-Philippe Prosper, said Standard Bank and Standard Chartered Bank were the first two banks to join the Global Trade Liquidity Programme.

Global trade was expected to contract this year for the first time in almost three decades, Prosper said. If economies were to recover from the downturn, capital had to be made available to revive trade.

"The potential decline in trade threatens to set back decades of progress in emerging markets and in tackling poverty," Prosper said.

Standard Bank has operations in 17 African countries and 19 countries outside of Africa with an emerging market focus.

Prosper said the IFC was in discussions with a "lot" of other regional banks to help mobilise the proposed funds.

Standard Bank CE Jacko Maree said the $400m credit line was "a very big number".

While the beneficiaries of the loan would be African, the funds could also be used to link trade flows between Africa and other emerging markets where Standard Bank operated, such as Brazil and China.

"In a world where liquidity and funding are in short supply, a loan facility of this scale will go a long way towards stimulating economic growth and development," Maree said.

Craig Polkinghorne, Standard Bank's global head of structured trade and commodity finance, said that due to the financial crisis some international banks had refocused their businesses and closed their trade businesses, or focused away from Africa.

"The pool of banks serving Africa has significantly reduced and therefore the pool of funds available for African trade has diminished over the past six months or so," he said.