Exim Bank Unveils 3-year Strategic Plan to Create 100,000 Jobs

The Ghana Export-Import (GEXIM) Bank, government’s principal export Finance institution in the country, has unveiled its 3-year strategic plan aimed at revamping the private sector.

The plan is an inclusive approach for the creation of 100,000 sustainable jobs and improvement of livelihoods, particularly women in the informal sector, as well as strengthening high potential value-chains to advance horizontal and vertical export diversification, and support local aggregation for improved food distribution in the country.

The Bank’s strategy is aligned to the government’s 10 point Agenda for Industrial Transformation, and also focuses on developing specific sectors such as: Garment and Apparel Manufacturing, Raw Material Base Development for Avocado, Cashew, Oil Palm, Cassava among others.

Ultimately, the Ghana EXIM Bank seeks to support the private sector with a view to improving the country’s economic fortunes, and therefore in choosing enterprises it would support, Ghana EXIM Bank considers three key benchmarks which are derived from development instead of commercial objectives. These are employment creation, value addition through production efficiency and foreign exchange revenue potential.

Crucially however, the bank has in place a strict risk management framework together with efficient monitoring strategies to ensure minimal impairment levels.

Its lending rate is the lowest in the industry at 8% per annum to support export and strategic importation. Each sector the Bank finances is selected based on the potential competitiveness in the West African Sub-region and indeed Africa as a whole.

The Bank is focused primarily on raw material-based development because it identifies this strategy as the key to sustain agro-processing.

From 2019-2021, the Exim Bank plans to give credit support to 100 Small Medium Enterprises with less than or equal to GHC1 million each to the SMEs, with a demand driven out grower support investment portfolio per each scheme at US$1 million.

The Bank has set investment priorities to reflect a healthy balance between financial return and impact, facilitate by ‘investing with acceptable discount’ in ‘impact-first and blended-return-focused’ business models within their focus area, and attract private capital investment for impact focused projects. It gives out 60% capital, 20% technology and 20% market access to SMEs in the country.

GEXIM was established by the Ghana Export-Import Bank Act 2016 (Act 911).

The Ghana Export-Import Bank (GEXIM), was launched to bolster the government’s quest for a feasible and sustainable export-led economy.