Exim Bank to push India's farm expertise abroad

The Exim Bank of India plans to extend more export credit to underdeveloped countries, especially African countries.

It wants to aggressively push for the export of Indian agricultural machinery and food processing technologies or to find a global market for Indian agricultural expertise.

The bank as on March 31 had extended 16 lines of credit amounting to $423 million.

The bank had 44 lines of credit (LOC) with credit commitments totalling $953 million available for utilisation, covering 68 countries in Asia, Africa, CIS and Latin America.

According to a senior bank official, "during the year (2004-05), 570 export contracts worth Rs 7,945 crore covering 64 countries were secured by 198 Indian exporters with our support".

Recently, an agreement was signed between Exim Bank and the International Trade Centre (ITC), Geneva to implement the enterprise management development services programme of ITC for supporting small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in their globalisation efforts.

As part of Unctad, a memorandum of understanding was also signed by the bank along with African Export Import Bank, Andean Development Corporation and Exim Bank of Malaysia in support of global network of Exim Banks and development finance institutions.

The Exim Bank as part of 'look Africa' initiative, has extended export credit of $15 million to Government of Senegal. As part of the credit deal, the Bank is to upgrade and develop Senegal's rural small and medium enterprises.

In Zambia, the bank has taken equity in the Development Bank of Zambia, a development finance institution, which has been restructured and assigned to play an important role in promoting the country's economic development.

Exim bank is the first non-regional and non-European institution to be admitted as a shareholder of Lome-headquartered Bank of Zambia and West African Development Bank.