The bank’s Regional Chief Operating Officer Anglophone West Africa, Abdoulaye Kone, who announced this in Abuja on Friday said the arrangement supported by the Nigerian Export Promotion Council , would come in two separate tranches of $500millon each.
As a pan-African development bank set up in 1993 to promote intra and extra-African trade, the officer said AFREXIMBANK was ready to partner with groups and organisations committed to the promotion of intra-African trade as well as trade with other countries of the world. “Our Interventions are on four pillars, namely intra-African trade, industrialisation and export development to stabilise the African countries’ economies to face economic shocks; trade finance and financial soundness,” he said.
“We also working on establishing the African Quality Assurance Centre in Ogun State to create the international standard accepted in export countries, to avoid dumping in Nigeria’s markets,” he said. “It takes an average of 45 days to transport goods from Nigeria to Europe. With the Sealink project, it will take not more than two weeks to transports goods from Nigeria to Ghana.
Mr Bello said NEXIM’s strategic interest to promote the project was to bridge the infrastructure gap, promote and enhance trade connectivity, as well as spur Nigeria’s regional and global trade competitiveness.