Couple honored for contributions to Greater Cleveland's ethnic communities: Global Village
Published: Sunday, July 01, 2012,  5:00 AM

Nigeria: S&P Upgrades Country Outlook to Positive Due to Reforms

29 December 2011

Nigeria's economic outlook has been upgraded from stable to positive by Standard & Poor's ratings agency, the firm announced Thursday, citing reform efforts in Africa's largest oil producer.
"The Nigerian government under President Goodluck Jonathan has been undertaking several important reform initiatives and is tightening its fiscal and monetary stance," the agency said.
"The authorities have restructured and strengthened the banking sector, and we expect economic growth to remain strong. We are revising our outlook to positive from stable ..."
It also reaffirmed its B+/B long- and short-term issuer credit ratings for Nigeria, the continent's most populous nation.
Nigeria has been pursuing economic reforms including a controversial measure to cut fuel subsidies, which the government says has amounted to more than $8 billion this year.
Economists and government officials view the move as essential to allow for more spending on the country's woefully inadequate infrastructure and to ease pressure on its foreign reserves.
Nigerians however view the subsidy, designed in part to hold petrol prices at 65 naira per litre ($0.40, 0.30 euros), as their only benefit from the nation's oil wealth.
Building roads in Abuja
Nigeria's central bank head Lamido Sanusi has also led sweeping bank reforms seen as having pulled the sector out of crisis. Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is a highly respected former World Bank managing director.
However, the country has also seen worsening violence blamed on Islamists and warnings from the Christian population that they will defend themselves against further attacks. Standard & Poor's noted concerns over the situation.
Nigeria relies tremendously on the oil industry for revenue, and the ratings agency pointed out that crude exports accounted for 72 percent of current account receipts in 2010.

Ex-Im Bank Issues 2011 Annual Report

Ex-Im Bank Issues 2011 Annual Report, Marks Another Record-Breaking Year Financing Exceeds $32 Billion for the First Time, Fueled by Dramatic Rise in Key Industries and Markets

Washington, D.C. --- Today, the Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank) released its 2011 Annual Report, a comprehensive analysis of Ex-Im Bank’s export financing in fiscal year 2011. For the third-straight year, Ex-Im Bank set export finance records including overall financing that for the first time exceeded $32 billion and supported $41.3 billion in exports at more than 3,600 U.S. companies, helping to support approximately 290,000 export-related American jobs.

“Creating opportunities for American companies, and American workers, to compete and win in a challenging global marketplace is our top priority at the Ex-Im Bank,” said Fred P. Hochberg, Ex-Im chairman and president. “Our financing of U.S. exports supports good-paying American jobs that sustain communities. We are driven by dedication, leadership, and expertise that produced a record-breaking year.”

Small Business Small business financing rose over 70 percent from $3.3 billion in FY 2008 to $6 billion in FY 2011 and is up almost $1 billion from last year. As part of its efforts to increase this portfolio, Ex-Im Bank’s Global Access for Small Business initiative has held more than 20 forums across the country this year, reaching 4,000 participants.

Key Industries

Ex-Im Bank is focusing on a number of industries with high potential for U.S. export growth: agribusiness, aircraft and avionics, construction, medical technologies, mining, oil and gas, and power generation, including renewable energy. These industries support the critical needs of a growing number of middle-class consumers in emerging and other global markets that offer U.S. exporters some of their best opportunities for sales growth.

In particular, infrastructure-related financing reached $23.0 billion, more than a 130 percent increase over FY 2008, the same growth rate as the Bank’s authorizations overall. This was a direct result of the Bank’s emphasis on nine developing countries with rapidly growing infrastructure needs.

The transportation sector for FY 2011 volume was $13.2 billion, up from $5.6 billion in FY 2008. Authorizations for environmentally-beneficial exports more than tripled from $227 million in FY 2008 to $889 million in FY 2011; and authorizations for renewable-energy exports increased to $721 million in FY 2011 from $30.4 million in FY 2008. Ex-Im Bank was one of the largest financiers of solar projects to India at $180 million.

Key Markets

Ex-Im Bank is open for business in 175 countries. However, the Bank has identified nine key markets as the primary focus of its outreach: Brazil, Colombia, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, South Africa, Turkey and Vietnam.

These countries were selected using a number of factors, including the size of the export markets for U.S. companies, projected economic growth, anticipated infrastructure demand and need for Ex-Im financing in each market.

The projected investment in infrastructure across these countries over the next five years is more than $2 trillion. This increased demand for products and services will help small and large U.S. exporters in many sectors to maintain current employment levels and create a significant number of new jobs.

The Bank is implementing outreach plans for each market that include targeted private-sector and public-sector buyers, financial institutions and government agencies.

In FY 2011, the Bank showed substantial increases in several of these markets. For example, export financing for sub-Saharan Africa was nearly 1.4 billion for the first time, supporting 8% of all U.S. exports to sub-Saharan Africa. Authorizations for exports to Colombia increased to $3.7 billion from $66 million, supporting 34% of overall U.S. exports.

Among the Bank’s nine key countries, Colombia, India, South Africa, and Turkey have shown impressive increases compared to FY 2008. Export financing for India increased to $2.9 billion from $1 billion, rising to first in Bank authorizations and exposure in the Asian regional exposure while it had ranked 10th in Asia regional authorizations in FY 2010.

About Ex-Im Bank: Ex-Im Bank is an independent federal agency that helps create and maintain U.S. jobs by filling gaps in private export financing at no cost to American taxpayers. In the past five years, Ex-Im Bank has earned for U.S. taxpayers $1.9 billion above the cost of operations. The Bank provides a variety of financing mechanisms, including working capital guarantees, export-credit insurance and financing to help foreign buyers purchase U.S. goods and services. For more information, visit www.exim.gov.