OREANDA-NEWS. July 30, 2008. The EBRD, with the generous support of EUR 275,000 from the Canadian Technical Cooperation (TC) Fund 2006-2009, is this year facilitating trade finance consultancy services for banks in Russia and Ukraine that have recently joined the EBRD’s Trade Facilitation Programme (TFP) as issuing banks, reported the press-centre of EBRD.

The project, led by the EBRD’s TFP Team, aims to secure institutional building by transferring know-how and providing operational guidance in trade finance.

Four banks in Russia and two banks in Ukraine have benefited from this year’s trade finance training. As more banks in the region join the TFP, similar training will be provided in the future.

The EBRD has a range of products to facilitate intra-regional and international trade in its countries of operations. The Trade Facilitation Programme provides credit facilities in the form of EBRD guarantees issued in favour of international commercial banks, covering the risk of issuing banks in the region. In this way confirming banks benefit from the EBRD's triple A credit rating. The EBRD also provides direct financing to banks in the region for on-lending to local companies for trade-related activities.

Along with providing support in terms of otherwise unavailable or scarcely available trade finance limits, the TFP team is making trade finance consulting services available to issuing banks with the objective to develop more sophisticated banking products to facilitate intra-regional and international trade. The programme provides the necessary skills and expertise to participating issuing banks in order to efficiently structure and implement trade finance operations, mitigate risks and establish banking trade activities in compliance with international banking standards.

Rodovid Bank in Kiev, Ukraine, is one of the beneficiaries of the trade finance advisory project. Rodovid’s Vice President for International Business, said: "We see great the importance of TFP for Ukrainian banks and institutions, and especially for ourselves. The programme will allow us to develop and structure International Trade Finance and will help our clients use all the opportunities of Trade Finance in their daily business activity.

It opens new possibilities for us to work with our clients and to offer them the easiest and cheapest way of financing their activities. As Rodovid Bank has a very wide network of branches and offices in Ukraine, we see TFP as a very important way of developing Trade Finance in regions, and also as a way of attracting new clients by offering new products for their business."

To date, TFP has facilitated more than 7,000 trade transactions worth over EUR4.3 billion, of which over 2,000 trades worth EUR1.9 billion were in both Russia and Ukraine. Trade facilitation has been complemented by training in trade finance provided to more than 600 bankers from more than 200 banks in 17 countries of EBRD’s operation.