EBRD TFP awards celebrate successful partner banks

Trade Facilitation Programme explores opportunities and challenges and awards prizes

The EBRD Trade Facilitation Programme (TFP) has honoured its most successful partner banks 2016 in an award ceremony in Nicosia today hosted by EBRD Managing Director, Financial Institutions, Nick Tesseyman, and supported by the Taipei Representative Office in the UK.

Prizes were awarded for the most active trade finance banks, for academic excellence, for environmental and social excellence (for the first time) and the top deals of the year to the following winners:

Mr Tesseymann praised the EBRD partners’ achievements and said: “Many of our winning banks today established EBRD trade finance limits in recent years and with our help they have made extensive use of both TFP and our award-winning further education programmes. Their success makes us extremely proud.”

The awards ceremony marked the end of the annual gathering of the EBRD’s Trade Facilitation Programme in association with the Bank’s Annual Meeting and Business Forum which in 2017 takes place in Cyprus. The TFP information session focused on the opportunities of trade but also on the challenges trade finance is facing in the light of a new regulatory framework and changing attitudes towards free trade.

Sessions discussed topics such as “Rethinking Trade Finance”, “What is Next for Trade Finance” and “Doing Business in Cyprus”. Other topics were the “Development of Trade Finance”, “Correspondent Banking in Trade Finance – Challenges and Solutions” and “Green Trade Finance – Solutions for an Energy Efficient Environment”.

Among the more than 300 guests were 25 prominent speakers including Marc Auboin, Economic Counsellor at the World Trade Organisation, Marios Tsiakkis, Secretary General of the Cyprus Chamber of Commerce and Vincent O’Brien, Chair of the ICC Market Intelligence Task Force.

The list of participating banks included institutions from 39 countries.

The EBRD’s Trade Finance Programme (TFP), launched in 1999, aims to promote foreign trade to, from and among the countries in which the EBRD invests. Through the Programme, the EBRD provides guarantees to international confirming banks and short-term loans to selected banks and factoring companies for on-lending to local exporters, importers and distributors.

The EBRD’s TFP currently includes 96 partner banks in 26 countries where the EBRD invests, with limits exceeding €1.5 billion in total and more than 800 confirming banks worldwide.

In Cyprus limits for four local banks for a total of almost €100 million have been extended to date. The TFP has supported a large range of international and intra-regional trade transactions, among them the export of construction services, the import of industrial equipment and electrical devices as well as the import of capital goods, construction equipment, vehicles, household products, food and electrical goods.

Supporting environmentally friendly development the EBRD launched its “Green TFP” in 2016 as a new concept under the Trade Facilitation Programme. Green TFP facilities have similar terms and conditions than other TFP facilities but are available only for the financing of exports, imports and local distribution of imported green technologies and services. In April 2017 “Green TFP” won the “innovative product” prize by the leading business and finance publication Global Finance.

Through its TFP, the EBRD not only stimulates regional business, but also provides a unique knowledge-sharing platform for market professionals. To date, over 100 Cypriot bankers have received scholarships to participate in the EBRD’s Trade Finance e-Learning programme. The graduates from Cyprus were among the top 25 individuals who completed the online Trade Finance e-Learning training in 2016.