One of such companies is General Electric Co, whose CEO Jeff Immlet told Financial Times that a decision to close the ExIm bank would damage American companies doing business in Africa especially as the US seeks to boost trade with the continent, an area that it lags far behind in comparison to China, Japan and the EU.
GE along with Boeing and Caterpillar are reportedly among the biggest beneficiaries of the ExIm bank without which FT reports the US president Obama stating that the US would struggle to compete for contracts with German or Chinese rivals.
Rating agency, Standard & Poor’s was also reported as warning that “the dissolution of the ExIm Bank could have a
‘significant’ long-term impact on Boeing, the commercial aircraft maker which receives more than a third of the bank’s credit”.
Mr Immelt, who disclosed that GE’s Africa business was doubling every four to five years, further regretted that the closure of the Bank would mean the US is basically making a statement as a country that it does not think that exports are important.
One of the major participants in the US’s Power Africa initiative, GE on Monday pledged to invest $2 billion in Africa by 2018 to boost infrastructure, worker skills and access to energy as a US-Africa summit began in New York. Among the company’s new investments in Africa are a manufacturing and assembly facility in Nigeria and a research facility in South Africa.
ExIm is itself providing $5 billion to support the US Power Africa initiative which aims to help increase access to power supply through the engagement of the private sectors of the economy. In June, the bank announced that it will be financing a $1 billion supply of energy and rail transport machinery to boost the development of economic infrastructure in Angola. That deal will see General Electric provide Angola, Africa’s second largest oil producer, with energy equipment worth $650-million.
No comments:
Post a Comment