IFC backs Bank CenterCredit trade lines as Kazakhstan gains sole GTFP partner

Bank CenterCredit has joined the International Finance Corporation’s Global Trade Finance Program as both an issuing and confirming bank, making it IFC’s only current partner bank in Kazakhstan under the programme.

The agreement gives BCC access to IFC-backed risk protection for cross-border trade instruments, including letters of credit, as the Kazakh lender looks to increase financing available to importers and exporters, particularly smaller businesses.

No dedicated facility amount or trade limit for Bank CenterCredit was disclosed in today’s announcement.

That distinction matters because IFC’s GTFP is a transaction-based guarantee programme rather than a conventional funded loan to BCC. Under the wider programme, IFC can provide confirming banks with partial or full guarantees against the payment risk of participating emerging-market banks.

Eligible instruments include letters of credit, trade-related bills and promissory notes, performance and advance-payment guarantees, and supplier credit for capital-goods imports. IFC says GTFP can cover up to 100% of an individual transaction’s value and provide tenors of as much as three years for capital-goods transactions. Those are programme parameters rather than a blanket 100% guarantee on every BCC trade.

For Kazakh companies, the benefit is primarily counterparty capacity.

An international confirming bank may be unwilling to take the full payment risk of a local issuing bank, particularly where country or bank limits are constrained. An IFC guarantee can absorb part or all of that exposure on an eligible transaction, allowing the confirming institution to support trade that might otherwise consume too much of its risk appetite.

BCC will unusually participate on both sides of that network as an issuing and confirming bank.

The new relationship is separate from Bank CenterCredit’s €18m supply chain finance facility with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which BCR covered in March. That programme shares risk on financing for local suppliers, whereas the IFC arrangement focuses on cross-border trade instruments and correspondent-bank risk.