Friday, March 5, 2010

Syndicated Lending is in the Pipeline

The Private Sector Operations Department at the AfDB has been working for some time to undertake both DFI and commercial banks syndicated lending under A/B lending schemes in an effort to mobilize even further resources for the African continent. Additionally, this should encourage greater participation of commercial banks in lending operations on the continent. In order to address this need, the Bank decided to start the African Financing Partnership (AFP).

Preeti Sinha is the Coordinator of the AFP. For the last year, she has been working to establish a common lender framework for syndicating loans between DFIs. More recently, her work has been focused on developing an A/B lending framework for commercial banks and the AfDB. This would allow commercial banks to contribute to loans wherein the AfDB serves as the lender of record. This will allow commercial lenders to mitigate currency conversion risks and minimize costs and delays related to capital repatriation.

Between syndicated DFI lending and A/B lending to include commercial B lenders, the AfDB is ramping up the scale and volume of its non-sovereign lending activities. As the world gradually climbs out of the aftermath left by the economic crisis, an increase in available financing to include more commercial lending in Africa is the only way the continent will keep pace with development achieved to-date and remain competitive worldwide.