The African Development Bank (AfDB) on Tuesday approved a 14.12 million dollar facility to support Nigeria’s membership of the African Trade Insurance Agency (ATI).
Senior Communications Officer of AfDB, Aristide Ahouassou, said the facility was approved through the group’s Trade Finance Operation.
He added that the facility was critical and mandatory to enable ATI commence its operations in Nigeria.
Ahouassou said the approved facility complemented ongoing and planned interventions geared toward building institutional capacity and improving the resilience of the Nigerian economy.
“Joining ATI will enable Nigeria to leverage its position to mobilise additional resources to finance trade, especially importation of essential goods such as medicines and communications equipment, to rehabilitate basic infrastructure and strengthen the country’s productive sector.
“Once membership formalities in ATI are finalised, Nigeria could benefit from gross political and commercial risk insurance cover on total investments and trade amounting to over 5 billion dollars by 2020.
“The catalytic effect of using limited financial resources in this way is undoubtedly massive,” he said in a statement.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that ATI’s mandate is to provide medium to long term credit and political risk insurance.
It also provides other risk mitigation products to its member countries and related public and private sector actors.
According to Ahouassou, these products directly encourage and facilitate foreign direct investment as well as local private sector investment in regional member countries.
He said the ATI catalysed private sector investments in infrastructure projects, thereby promoting economic integration of participating countries into regional markets.
“This financing aligns with four of the Bank’s High Five priorities, including Light Up and Power Africa, Industrialise Africa, Feed Africa and Integrate Africa.
“As a trade finance facilitation initiative, this financing will support operations that are crosscutting and multi-sectoral in nature and will have an impact on agribusiness, infrastructure development, electricity generation, telecommunications and manufacturing,” he said.
Also, the Director of the Financial Sector Department, Stefan Nalletamby, reiterated the bank’s ambitious development mandate to supporting the development of strong and viable African institutions such as ATI.
“The Bank seeks to achieve its ambitious development mandate by working with and through other strategic partners, and where possible, by supporting the development of strong and viable African institutions such as ATI.
“As such, this financing scales up the work of ATI by supporting the beneficiary RMCs to become members,” Nalletamby said.
NAN also reports that Nigeria, as Africa’s largest economy, joined 14 other African countries that have already signed up to ATI membership.
