AfDB Wins Prize for Best DFI in Africa for Its Trade Finance Program

30 June 2010
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African Development Bank (Abidjan)
press release

The African Development Bank (AfDB) has received the "Highly Commended" prize for the Best Development Finance Institution (DFI) in Africa at the Trade Finance Magazine 2010 Awards for Excellence.

There were more than 300 participants at the ceremony in London, where some 50 awards including Deals of the Year and Awards for Excellence, were presented.

The Board of Directors of the AfDB Group approved on 1 July 2009, a USD 500 million investment in the Global Trade Liquidity Program (GTLP) as part of the bank's Trade Finance Initiative (TFI). Since approval of the TFI, the Bank has identified and is implementing several trade facilitation operations aimed at alleviating the market shortfall of short-term financing for trade.

The TFI, approved by the Board of Directors on 4 March 2009, is part of the Bank's response to the financial crisis and followed a call for assistance from its Regional Member Countries (RMCs). The USD 1.0 billion TFI is helping African commercial banks and other financial institutions to reinvigorate their trade finance operations.

The GTLP aims to mobilize USD 5 billion from the Participants. This will be used to generate up to USD 50 billion in trade finance operations over a three-year period, of which USD 15 billion will be targeted for Africa. To date, USD 4 billion have been raised, of which USD 1.2 billion were disbursed to support an estimated USD 4.4 billion in trade volume. The program is being implemented through major global and regional banks with extensive trade finance presence in RMCs (more than 350 smaller issuing banks).

The initial Partner banks in the GTLP include Standard Bank of South Africa (SBSA), Citibank and Commerz Bank. The LOC to SBSA is the first GTLP approved and disbursed transaction. It is a USD 250-million facility (of which USD 100 million comes from AfDB, 100 million from IFC and USD 50 from the Commonwealth Development Corporation (CDC); and USD 150 million from direct parallel loan agreement between Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) and SBSA. The Bank's proceeds are playing a key role in allowing African financial institutions and major international banks operating in Africa to leverage their credit and cross-border limits and significantly enhance trade credit availability across the continent.

"The adverse impacts of the financial crisis that hit the world in 2008 became evident in Africa towards the end of the same year. Its severity and detrimental impact on investment and trade required urgent, collective countercyclical actions by the international financial community, using creative and pragmatic approaches that would support the recovery of trade flows as soon as possible", said Bobby Pittman, AfDB Vice President, in charge of Infrastructure, Private Sector and Regional Integration. In particular, as many African commercial banks were experiencing severe liquidity constraints, the African Development Bank had an important role to play in helping the continent through the financial crisis."

"Setting up the first AfDB Trade Finance Programme in a short period of time was a real challenge; however, for us, success was an obligation. As premier development institution in Africa, AfDB had an obligation to play a much needed countercyclical role supporting Africa in tackling the financial crisis. This award proves the relevance of this program to support private sector operations in Africa in difficult times", said Ghazi Ben Ahmed, AfDB Lead Trade Finance Officer.

The market situation for trade finance had, by and large, been improving since the beginning of the financial crisis- although that assessment should be mitigated, particularly regarding low income and weak economies in Africa. Against this backdrop, the trade needs of African market banks call for an aggregation of considerable resources, and the AfDB, other DFIs and global and regional financial institutions are still uniquely positioned to assist in partially meeting the challenge of improving the availability of trade finance.

The London-based Trade Finance magazine's mission is to bring market intelligence on global trade, export and commodity finance markets to exporters/importers, financiers, insurers, and other service providers.

Contacts

Onike Nicol-Houra

Read the original article on African Development Bank (AfDB).

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