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The United States’ official export credit agency the Export-Import Bank (EXIM) is networking with Indian industry and American industry bodies to foray in a big way into export financing in emerging areas like renewable energy in India, said Reta Jo Lewis, President & Chair, EXIM. The financing tools will help give a level playing field to American companies when they compete more against Chinese firms in emerging sectors, Lewis told FE.
Excerpts.
What are your current plans for the US and India, and how are these expected to help decarbonisation efforts in both the countries ?
In 2019, the US Congress asked EXIM to look at four additional mandates including renewable energy (RE), energy efficiency and energy storage to make more financing available in the renewable space. We were told to make more financing available for small business, Sub Saharan Africa, and also in the transformation of exports, which also includes RE. Especially where we see American companies competing more against China, we are using the financing tools we have to help level the playing field. We’re here in India as part of our strong commitment to with the private sector, and aid US companies who are here in India, and Indian companies who are also investing in the US. Given the strong US-India bilateral relationship, and we’re just one of the government agencies that the private sector can resort to, for the types of financing that companies will need to grow and expand and invest in sectors that are critically important.
What is the current scale of EXIM financing of RE projects in India, and what are the targets?
EXIM Bank is an institution that has no size or sector limitation or country limitation on the amount. We like to say, that nothing’s too small, nothing’s too large. A for new technologies, especially in areas around RE, contracts are very large. But we don’t have to participate by ourselves. We have strong relationships with the export credit agency here, the ECGC. We have co-financing agreements with others who are friends and allies and our role is to fill the gap. Our goal is to crowd in the private sector, not to crowd it out.
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We’ve traditionally been in the telecommunications and aviation sector in India. So, we’re looking to expand our whether it’s around telecommunication or green hydrogen. We were talking about the kind of financing we could provide in green hydrogen. So, we’re open to all sectors.
Have you identified any Indian RE firms for extending financing facilities?
There are many US and Indian companies that we’ve met with. We’re working with them as they are seeking partnerships with each other, for them to be able to understand what type of financing we might be able to make available in the form of what is direct loans, working capital guarantees, insurance, or export credit insurance.
Are there any agreements in the pipeline with India?
We have a QUAD agreement that’s been signed by India, US, Japan and Australia to work in critical sectors including critical minerals, digital and renewables. But we’re not limited to that. Those are just similar ones. We also are working on a bilateral agreement. Currently, our exposure in India is not very large, but we are working very hard to change that.