Tag: AFREXIMBANK

The European Investment Bank (EIB) has signed a new 15-year 200 million Euro loan agreement with the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank).

The loan is aimed at supporting trade-related productive investments, including in renewable energy projects, in Africa. The facility will support promoters in more than 40 countries across Africa with long-term funding.

By improving access to finance for private enterprises, and specifically SMEs and Mid-caps, this loan will enhance Intra-African trade as well as trade with the European Union.

It will enable smaller companies to sustain and create new jobs and will ultimately stimulate the expansion, diversification and development of African trade. At least 25% of this financing will be dedicated to projects which will help to diversify the power mix in the region, reducing reliance on fossil fuels and supporting climate goals.

Speaking from the Africa Day event, jointly hosted by the EIB and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), Werner Hoyer, President of the European Investment Bank said: “The EIB, as the EU Bank, is committed to supporting investment in Africa that unlocks economic opportunities, creates jobs and tackles a changing climate.

As one of the largest multilateral financial institutions, the EIB has a crucial role to play to help channel private capital towards the energy transition. This is urgent if we want to achieve the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals. With this operation Afreximbank and the EIB are joining forces to improve access to clean energy across Africa”.

“We are confident that effective implementation of this facility, which heralds Afreximbank’ s financing of climate action projects in Africa, will lead to strong development outcomes, including employment creation, increased economic activities, and increase in tax revenues for fiscally strained governments,” said Prof. Benedict Okey Oramah, President of Afreximbank. According to him, Afreximbank decided to conclude the facility in furtherance of its current strategy which prioritizes Intra-African trade.

The African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) has launched a $15 million project preparation facility aimed at increasing the availability of viable well-prepared projects in Africa and at making such projects bankable and attractive to investors.

The Afreximbank Project Preparation Facility (APPF), launched in Johannesburg, South Africa,  on the sidelines of the Africa Investment Forum, will provide technical and financial support to early stage companies in the preparation and development of projects from conceptual stage to bankability stage, the point at which such projects can attract interest from equity investors and debt financiers.

Afreximbank has set up the APPF with an initial seed capital investment of up to $15 million.

Speaking during the launch, Afreximbank President Benedict Oramah said that the facility would support transactions that sought to implement logistical platforms that supported export growth and diversification, or facilitated the assimilation of African commodities into global value chains, or increased the volume and flow of tradeable goods and services along Africa’s trade corridors.

According to President Oramah, the facility supports the Afreximbank’s mandate and strategy which seeks to promote intra-African trade, and industrialisation and export development activities in the continent.

Also speaking, Tshepo Mahloele, Chief Executive Officer of Harith General Partners, a leading pan-African infrastructure developer, lauded the APPF as “a bold step in the right direction to assist Africa to unleash its full potential through de-risking of investments early on in the project preparation cycle”.

Mahloele, who noted that the project preparation step was often overlooked in the pursuit of quick returns, said that Harith had ensured efficient and professional preparation of infrastructure projects. According to him, Africa has long been at the mercy of poor planning, leading to infrastructure project backlogs that has limited GDP growth by at least two per cent per annum.

Afreximbank’s intervention will complement ongoing project preparation initiatives and culminate in shortening the project preparation cycle, thereby fast-tracking Africa economic development, he said.

The African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) and CDC Group Plc have signed a $100-million master risk participation agreement to support Afreximbank’s Trade Facilitation Programme.

Under the terms signed in Casablanca, Morocco, CDC will provide unfunded risk participation to Afreximbank as the Bank provides trade finance products that include trade confirmation services; trade confirmation guarantee; and irrevocable reimbursement undertakings.

Speaking during the signing ceremony, Amr Kamel, Afreximbank’s Executive Vice President for Business Development and Corporate Banking, said that agreement will support Afreximbank’s trade confirmation services under which the Bank provides confirmation lines to African financial institutions to support their trade businesses and increase capacity to undertake trade finance transactions.

It will also support the Afreximbank Trade Confirmation Guarantee Programme, which offers full guarantee to international banks on behalf of African financial institutions, with the aim of resolving the issue of lack of credit limit by international/confirming banks for the African counterparts or situations of limited credit limit due to capacity constraints, among others.

Also speaking, Admir Imami, Director, Supply Chain Finance and Trade Finance of CDC, who signed on behalf of his company, said CDC was excited at the opportunity to work with Afreximbank and looked forward to many more joint projects and deals in the future.

Also speaking at the just concluded Afreximbank structured trade finance in Casablanca, Kamel said structured trade finance offers Africa a vital pathway to boosting intra-African trade and increasing the continent’s global exports.

Addressing the opening of the Fundamentals of Structured Trade Finance Seminar and Workshops, he regretted that Africa still suffered from a deficit of expertise in structured finance even though it was widely acknowledged as a highly effective trade financing tool.

He said Afreximbank remained committed to equipping African financiers with the knowledge required to structure bankable trade and trade related project finance transactions.

“This 18th Structured Trade Finance Seminar progresses Afreximbank’s goal of strengthening the capacity of its partners and clients in understanding trade and trade-related project financing issues as they affect Africa and is driven by the widening trade financing gap and the challenge of increasing the continent’s share of global trade,” he said.

Kamel added that Africa had much to learn from the economic transformation of Morocco, noting that “Many years of modernising and expanding its infrastructure has successfully transformed Morocco into a commercial crossroads between Africa and the West.”

In her address on behalf of the Government of the Kingdom of Morocco,  Zaaboul thanked Afreximbank for having chosen Morocco to host the seminar which represents a platform for learning and exchange on an important theme relating to structured trade finance

Zaaboul stressed the role that intra-African trade can play in structuring development, especially as a vector of regional integration

The Structured Trade Finance seminar and workshop is being attended by more than 200 participants and experts from across the globe, including executives of banks, law firms and other financial institutions, senior government officials and financial regulators as well as corporates actively engaged in the promotion and financing of African trade and trade-related projects.

African banks can improve their business performance by keying into the Afreximbank Trade Facilitation Programme (AFTRAF). The programme was recently introduced by the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank), representatives of the Senegalese banking sector heard yesterday in Dakar.

Speaking during a roadshow to introduce AFTRAF, Fatma Bao, Manager in the Afreximbank Guarantees and Specialized Finance Unit, said that the programme was structured to enhance confidence of counterparties in the settlement of international trade transactions for critical imports into Africa, support intra-African trade and facilitate the purchase of equipment for production of export goods.

She said that the programme was being offered to African financial institutions in response to the increasing de-risking of African banks as a result of stringent compliance and regulatory requirements imposed by international banks.

The Afreximbank team described the programme as the Bank’s response to the recurring trend of reduction or withdrawal of trade lines to African banks by the international banks following the de-risking process.

“Afreximbank wants to understand the needs of the Senegalese market and the current obstacles facing you to satisfy these needs so that we can cooperate with you to improve the country’s trade,” said Ms Bao.

The roadshow was held as part of a strategy to allow Afreximbank expand its coverage of Africa and to onboard Senegalese banks to the AFTRAF programme. It also aims to enhance cooperation between Afreximbank and the local banks in order to grow the nation’s economy.

Similar roadshows are planned for several other African countries.

Participating in the roadshow were Coris Bank, Ecobank, Banque Régionale et de Marché Banque EL Amana-Mauritania, Banque Nationale pour le Développement économique, BGFI Sénégal, NSIA Bank, and Banque Islamique du Sénégal.

the African Export-Import Bank (Afrexim bank) has released its unaudited financial statements for the half-year period ended 30 June 2018, showing gross revenue of $343 million. The figure represents a $21 million increase over the gross revenue for the same period in 2017.

The results, released by the bank in Cairo, attributed the higher gross revenue to a significant increase in fee income by 119 per cent, while interest and similar income recorded a 2 per cent growth compared to prior year performance.

The bank’s attributable earnings over the six months also amounted to $110 million, beating the budget by 34 per cent.

The key profitability ratios equally came in well above budget, with the return on the bank’s average shareholders’ equity (ROAE) standing at 10 per cent, compared to the budget: of 8.08 per cent, and the return on the average assets (ROAA) at 1.88 per cent as against the budget of 1.57 per cent.

Other key figures from the results include interest and similar income – $314.81 million; net interest margin – 3.17 per cent; net fee and commission income – 23 million; operating expenses – 23.04 million and allowance and impairment on loans and advances – 31.95 million and total assets – $11.52 billion;        total liabilities – $ 9.21 billion and shareholders’ funds – $2.31 billion.

The African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) has launched a pan-African customer due diligence platform called Mansa. The product facilitates African trade by providing the single trusted source of primary data required to conduct due diligence checks on counterparties in Africa.

The Mansa platform is being positioned as the centralised ‘go to’ platform for fulfilling client due diligence (CDD) and know your customer (KYC) requirements throughout the African continent. By providing comprehensive due diligence information it will end the subjective evaluation of customers and eliminate the perceived, and often unfair, risk in trading with African counterparties. The platform also offers insight into the investment climate and information on related services on the continent.

The platform is named after Mansa Musa, the powerful ruler of the West African Malian Empire in the 1300s, who was responsible for opening up trade across Africa by establishing Timbuktu as a commercial, cultural and religious centre. He is believed to be the only person ever to control the flow of gold between Africa and the Mediterranean.

Speaking at the launch, Benedict Oramah, President of Afreximbank, said: “Our new Mansa platform is a natural extension of Afreximbank’s mission to expand, develop and diversify African trade. Mansa will enhance intra-African trade by enabling the efficient on-boarding of customers whilst reducing both operational workloads and the costs of compliance. Sometimes a new service comes along which represents a win-win for its users and Mansa is a perfect example of this.

“Afreximbank has taken the lead by creating a platform for client due diligence and know your customer. It will enable African financial institutions and corporate entities to meet customer and business partners’ expectations at the same time as ensuring consistent and effective regulatory compliance.”

The ultimate aim of the platform is to increase trade in, and with, Africa by de-risking compliance and strengthening relationships between international banks and global trading entities with their African counterparties, by promoting good governance, transparency and accountability, he added.