Ex-Im Bank, California trade group join forces

   The U.S. Export-Import Bank has entered a marketing partnership with the Monterey Bay International Trade Association (MBITA), a non-profit organization in northern California, to help small and midsized exporters enter overseas markets.
   The so-called City/State Partners program contract will connect Ex-Im Bank’s products and services to MBITA’s network of entrepreneurs and financial institutions in the counties around San Francisco and its ports.
   Members of MBITA represent small and midsized businesses throughout the tri-county region of the Monterey Bay and Silicon Valley. This association helped start the BAYTRADE program in 1995, which generated more than 6,000 new jobs during its first five years. MBITA also manages the TradePort Collaborator, an intranet of more than 140 trade promotion service professionals who represent more than 60,000 exporters, importers, trade promotion service providers, and private investors.
   “For 18 years, MBITA has linked business resources with clients throughout the world. Now through our partnership, the bank adds expanded access to its services and products to help accelerate export sales and job growth,” said Ex-Im Bank Chairman and President Fred P. Hochberg, in a statement. 
   “MBITA’s and TradePort’s clients and members tend to be on the cutting edge of technologies,” Tony Livoti, president of MBITA, said. “Sometimes they feel an export-financed transaction into a new foreign marketplace gives them a better footing to grow their companies, as opposed to using their own financing to break into our very competitive domestic markets.”
   The purpose of the City/State Partners program is to ensure the Ex-Im Bank’s export finance programs are more accessible to small and midsized businesses through the help of local, state, and regional economic development and business support organizations.
   Ex-Im Bank offers to Bay-area enterprises expanded access to products such as its Global Credit Express, which helps exporters acquire low-cost working capital up to $500,000, as well as Express Insurance, which simplifies small business access to export credit risk insurance on their foreign accounts receivable. The bank has designed a range of low-cost loans, guarantees, export credit insurance, and supply-chain financing structures to enable both small and large businesses to export globally without fear of nonpayment.