The U.S. Export-Import Bank’s board on Friday, the last day of the federal government’s fiscal year 2011, approved $3.4 billion in financing to support U.S. exports from a wide variety of companies in the aerospace, oil and gas, locomotives, solar-energy and other industries.
The bank estimates that this financing will support more than 20,000 U.S. jobs.
Most of the transactions given final approval previously had been reviewed and approved by the bank’s board in late July and August, subject to a 35-day congressional notification period that ended for each transaction earlier in the week.
Ex-Im Bank is a self-sustaining federal agency that receives no appropriations from Congress and charges fees and interest to fund its authorizations.
The approved transactions include:
• Pemex (various U.S. exporters) – $1 billion in authorizations for Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), Mexico’s national oil-and-gas company. The authorizations will support sales of U.S. equipment and services to Pemex for its onshore and offshore projects. The authorizations include a $200 million small-business facility to finance Pemex’s purchases from U.S. small businesses across the country.
• Air India (The Boeing Co.) – $1.3 billion in loan guarantees supporting Boeing commercial aircraft sales to Air India. In addition to these final commitments, the board approved a $2.1 billion preliminary commitment to support future deliveries of Boeing planes to Air India. Upon approval of the conversion of the preliminary commitment into a final commitment, the transactions in total will support the export of 30 Boeing planes to the state-owned, national flag carrier of India.
• Kazakhstan Temir Zholy (General Electric) – $425 million direct loan to support the sale of 196 GE Evolution Series locomotives and locomotive kits manufactured by GE Transportation Systems in Erie, Pa., to JSC Lokomotiv, a subsidiary of Kazakhstan Temir Zholy (KTZ), the state-owned, national railway of Kazakhstan. The contract is GE’s largest to date with KTZ since it began selling to the railway in 2003 and is the first contract supporting locomotive kits for new GE diesel locomotives.
• Tatith Solar, India (SolarWorld Industries America) – $19 million direct loan to support the sales of solar photovoltaic panels from SolarWorld in Hillsboro, Ore., and construction services from various U.S. suppliers to Tatith Energies Gujarat Private Ltd. The panels will be used in a 5-megawatt solar photovoltaic crystalline power project in the state of Gujarat. The transaction is the sixth solar-energy project that Ex-Im Bank has supported in India in fiscal year 2011.
• Supply-chain financing – $666.4 million working capital guarantee to support supply-chain financing by Citibank N.A. in New York to Boeing’s small-business suppliers. Ex-Im Bank’s guarantee will support a $740.5 million facility under the bank’s supply chain finance guarantee to finance accounts receivable due from Boeing to its U.S.-based suppliers for a term of 12 months. The facility will be administered under Citibank’s existing supplier finance program and will extend financing support to Boeing’s nationwide network of small-business U.S. suppliers.
Ex-Im Bank approved about $25 billion in total authorizations in fiscal year 2011 — an all-time record. This total includes more than 2,500 U.S. small-business transactions, the bank said.
Ex-Im Bank approves $3.4 billion in export financing
