U.S. supports GE train deal with Kazakhstan

   The U.S. Export-Import Bank signed a credit agreement with Kazakhstan Temir Zholy (KTZ), Kazakhstan’s state-owned national railway company, and KTZ’s subsidiary Joint Stock Company Lokomotiv for $425 million to support the sale of about 200 General Electric locomotives and kits to KTZ.
   “This transaction was initially held up because of outdated systems and processes,” Ex-Im Bank Chairman and President Fred P. Hochberg said in a statement. “That prompted us to change our way of doing business; we streamlined our procedures and established new benchmarks.
   “I’m proud to report that this past year, 90 percent of all transactions were processed within 30 days, and 98 percent were processed within 100 days; it’s government at the speed of business,” he added.
   The deal with KTZ is the largest single amount of financing that Ex-Im Bank has provided to any railroad anywhere in the world during the past 15 years. The contract is GE’s largest equipment sale to date with KTZ since it began selling to the railway in early 2000.
   The bank also released its fiscal year 2012 annual report, highlighting the fourth consecutive record-breaking year with almost $35.8 billion in export financing that supported about $50 billion in exports and 255,000 American jobs.
   “The ‘Made in the USA’ brand has never been stronger, fueled by the strength of American exporters and the work President Obama has done to grow our economy,” Hochberg said. “Fiscal year 2012 authorizations, at over $35.7 billion, were up about 10 percent from the year before, and more than double the amount from fiscal year 2008.
   “In the past five years, U.S. exporters working with Ex-Im Bank have created or sustained over 1 million private sector jobs. And we’ve done it all at no cost to the American taxpayer, as Ex-Im has sent $1.6 billion to the U.S. Treasury over the past five years,” he said.