South Sudan: Govt gets loan to join African financial bodies
Source: Middle East Insurance Review | Jun 2017
The African Development Bank Group (AfDB) has approved a US$18.15-million facility to the Government of South Sudan (GRSS), to assist the country with the required resources for its application to join the African Trade Insurance Agency (ATI) and Trade & Development Bank (TDB). This is a critical step and a prerequisite for the respective institutions to commence their operations within South Sudan.
As a member of the two institutions, it is expected that South Sudan will benefit initially from total investments of up to $300 million, which will go towards financing various initiatives in the tradable sectors, said AfDB.
The approved facility complements AfDB’s other ongoing and planned interventions geared towards building institutions and improving resilience and livelihoods for South Sudan by addressing not only the humanitarian crisis and strengthening institutional capacity, but also facilitating private sector investments in a fragile environment, AfDB said in a statement.
In this regard, it is anticipated that joining the TDB and ATI will help South Sudan leverage the limited resources available to the country by mobilising additional significant resources that can be invested in the importation of essential goods (such as medicines, foodstuff, communication equipment, spare parts, etc), the rehabilitation of basic infrastructure and the strengthening of the productive sector of the country.
TDB finances and fosters trade, socio-economic development and regional economic integration across its regional member countries. It offers a broad range of products and services, across both the private and public sectors, including debt, equity and quasi-equity as well as guarantees.
ATI provides medium- to long-term credit and political risk insurance, as well as other risk mitigation products to its member countries and related public and private sector actors. These products directly encourage and facilitate foreign direct investment as well as private sector investments in a fragile environment and both intra- and extra-African trade through trade finance facilitation. M