The U.S. Export-Import Bank (EXIM Bank) has pledged to provide soft loans worth $1.5 billion to Vietnamese companies to purchase “made in USA” goods, services and machinery. The information was announced by the bank’s senior Asia-Pacific business development officer James S.Lewis, who led a business mission to Vietnam last week to showcase the bank’s potential, the Thoi Bao Ngan Hang newspaper reported. This is part of the lender’s effort to help finance trade between Vietnamese companies and American exporters, he said. Financing can be made in working capital guarantees, export-credit insurance, and loans with preferential interest rates of between 2% and 2.88% per year. Under requirements, Vietnamese enterprises, including private firms and small- and medium-sized companies, can use the loans to buy goods, services and machinery from the U.S. for critical infrastructure projects such as air transportation, power generation and transmission, oil and gas development, renewable energy and healthcare. Vietnamese buyers need a local bank to provide loan guarantees if it wants to get EXIM Bank’s financing, Mr. Lewis said. The memorandum of understanding for this credit package was signed in 2011 between EXIM Bank and Vietnam Development Bank (VDB) to expand the then-existing credit package, which had been jointly provided by the two banks since 2010, from $500 million to $1.5 billion. In early October, the U.S. bank approved a $118 million direct loan to the state-run Vietnam Post and Telecommunications Group (VNPT) to pay for the purchases of Vinasat-2 satellite and services from Lockheed Martin. Another local firm, Cong Ly, is also deploying a wind power generation project with a combined capacity of 300MW in southern Bac Lieu province thanks to a $200 million loan from EXIM Bank. Mr. Lewis said his bank’s current exposure to Vietnam, excluding the Lockheed Martin satellite financing, was about $230 million. After signing BTA in 2001, Vietnam-U.S. trade jumped from $2.9 billion in 2002 to $21.9 billion in 2011. (Thoi Bao Ngan Hang – Banking Times Oct 17 p2, Dau Tu – Investment Oct 16 p19, www.nld.com.vn [1] Oct 14, www.vef.vn [2] Oct 16)
