PRESSING its interest to engage Nigeria by offering financing options in key sectors of the economy, top officials of the Export-Import Bank of the United States (US-EX-IM) are in the country intent on reversing a situation where Nigeria is not tapping about 70 per cent of about $1 billion in products and financial facilities offered directly to the country by the US bank, Empowered Newswire reported, on Tuesday.
Nigeria’s Ambassador to the United States, Professor Adebowale Adefuye, said the chairman and president of the EX-IM bank of the United States, Mr Fred P. Hochberg, is currently visiting Nigeria. The visit, which began on Tuesday, will end tomorrow.
Hochberg would meet President Goodluck Jonathan and several other ministers; Federal Government officials and bank chief executive officers during the trip.
Adefuye, who is accompanying the US-EXIM bank officials, including the Vice-Chairman and Vice-President, Wanda Felton, on the trip to Nigeria, disclosed before leaving Washington DC that both “Nigeria and US EX-IM are expected to sign a Memorandum of Understanding, at the end of the visit.”
In line with this, US-EXIM bank has already authorised almost $30 billion exports since the beginning of 2011, of which a total of $1.5 billion was allocated to Sub-Saharan Africa and about $300 million authorisations went to Nigeria, mostly through the private sector buyers and mainly through Nigerian banks.
But the Nigerian Ambassador to the US said “this is only a fraction of the pre-approved guaranty of $1 billion that the bank has set aside for Nigeria.”
The US-EXIM bank Nigeria is one of only two countries in sub-Saharan Africa that enjoys a pre-approved credit facility, Angola being the other one. But both US-EXIM officials on the one hand, and Adefuye and the Federal Government on the other hand, are concerned that Nigeria has not been fully utilising US EX-IM products.
In fact there is worry that US-EXIM activities in the country have progressively decreased in recent times, according to Adefuye.
Consequently, the Nigerian private and public sectors, especially the small and medium enterprises, are said to be losing out on the opportunity to access cheap and long term funds through Ex-IM guaranties, credits, insurance and direct finance.
Adefuye said some of the reasons attributed to this, “include issues related to the banking crises that had bedevilled the country, seeming uncooperative attitude of the Nigerian banks, stringent EX-IM bank application and qualification requirements among others.
The visit is seen as a way to correct the situation and as part of Ambassador Adefuye’s goal of attracting American investments in the Nigerian economy “through robust engagements with the American private sector as well as encouraging the full participation of the Nigerian private sector in partnership with their American counterparts,” the envoy said.
The US EX-IM bank’s chairman visit was brokered by the Nigerian Embassy, after series of negotiations with the Bank including a meeting in March this year between a Nigerian delegation led by the then Senior Presidential Advisor on Power and now Minister of Power, Professor Bart Nnaji and Hochberg, EX-IM chairman and president.
Adefuye explained that “that meeting mutually decided that, in view of Nigeria’s position as one of nine global priority markets for the Bank, the chairman EX-IM should visit Nigeria; to re-engage with the Nigerian market, explore possibilities for expanding Ex-IM portfolio in Nigeria and build American investors’ confidence in the Nigerian economy.”
http://tribune.com.ng/index.php/news/29908--us-ex-im-bank-in-nigeria-offers-1b-in-credit-facility