Ghanaian President John Mahama, has urged the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) to further strengthen its trade finance support to the Ghanaian business sector, particularly, in the areas of agro-processing and pharmaceuticals.
Speaking when Dr. Benedict Oramah, President-designate of the bank, paid him a courtesy call, in Accra.
President Mahama highlighted the increasingly important roles of those sectors in the country’s economy, and also called on the bank to increase its involvement in Ghana’s manufacturing, construction, renewable energy, and other key sectors.
He commended Dr. Oramah on his appointment as the next President of the bank, and pledged Ghana’s continued commitment to working with Afreximbank to achieve its objective of promoting intra and extra-African trade.
Earlier, Dr. Oramah announced that Afreximbank had approved financing totaling about $2 billion for the Ghana government, corporate and financial institutions since 1993, with annual approvals increasing from $6.5 million in 1994 to $280 million in 2014.
“As at October 2014, Ghana was the sixth largest beneficiary of the bank’s funding programmes,” said Dr. Oramah, who noted that the support had been mainly directed toward the energy sector, the financial sector, the agro-processing and industrial development sectors, and to the promotion of higher local value-added in Ghana’s extractive industries.
The credit facilities provided by the bank included a $150 million loan facility to the Volta River Authority to support capacity expansion and refurbishment activities, and a further $300 million facility under negotiation; $70 million to a Ghanaian company to enable it offer mining and engineering services to international mining companies; $100 million to the Bank of Ghana to address short-term liquidity challenges, and $70 million to two Ghanaian-owned cocoa processing companies, he said.
Dr. Oramah announced that Afreximbank was considering a framework to scale up its intervention in the Ghanaian economy, in recognition of the opportunities offered by the relatively stable socio-political and economic environment.
“The package shall include foreign exchange liquidity support to facilitate essential imports and deal with the transitory challenges, as well as term funding to strategic sectors towards the realisation of the country’s long-term development agenda,” he explained.
Dr. Oramah was accompanied on the visit by Kofi Adomakoh, Director of Afreximbank’s Project and Export Development Finance Department, and Joy Albright of the Legal Department.
The African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) is the foremost Pan-African multilateral financial institution, devoted to financing and promoting intra and extra-African trade. The bank was established in October 1993 by African governments, African private and institutional investors, and non-African investors.
Its two basic constitutive documents are the Establishment Agreement, which gives it the status of an international organisation, and the Charter, which governs its corporate structure and operations.
Since 1994, Afreximbank has approved almost $35 billion in credit facilities for African businesses, including about $4.5 billion in 2014. Afreximbank is headquartered in Cairo.
African Eye News.com
