Nigeria could receive as much as $5 billion in gross political and commercial risk insurance cover on total investments and trade from its membership to the African Trade Insurance Agency (ATI), which it has just secured $14.12 million facility for.
The African largest economy, now joining 14 other African countries that have already signed up for ATI membership, received an approval for $14.2 million facility this week from the African Development Bank Group (AfDB), to support its membership in the insurance agency, as a part of critical and mandatory step towards commencement of ATI’s operations in Nigeria.
The approved facility, AfDB said, complements ongoing and planned interventions geared at building institutional capacity and improving the resilience of the Nigerian economy.
The federal government see joining ATI as enabling Nigeria to leverage its position to mobilize additional resources to finance trade, especially importation of essential goods such as medicines and communications equipment, to rehabilitate basic infrastructure and strengthen the country’s productive sector.
“The bank seeks to achieve its ambitious development mandate by working with and through other strategic partners, and where possible, by supporting the development of strong and viable African institutions such as ATI. This financing scales up the work of ATI by supporting the beneficiary RMCs to become members,” Stefan Nalletamby, Financial Sector Department of the AfDB said.
ATI’s mandate is to provide medium to long term credit and political risk insurance, as well as other risk mitigation products to its member countries and related public and private sector actors; and the new financing aligns with four of the Bank’s High 5 priorities, namely: Light Up and Power Africa, Industrialize Africa, Feed Africa and Integrate Africa, the bank said.
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