Afreximbank to Lead $1b Trade, Infrastructure Support in Togo

• Afreximbank to Lead $1b Trade, Infrastructure Support in Togo

The African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) will attract up to $1 billion in financing and investments to support trade activities and infrastructure development- industrial parks and logistics facilities, in Togo.

The move, which forms part of its support for the development of the region’s economic activities, will see it participate in projects that are likely to span from $500 million to $1 billion in the country, beside those in other African countries.

Afreximbank President, Dr. Benedict Oramah, after meetings with Togolese President, Faure Gnassingbé and several ministers, Dr. Oramah, led a mission of business leaders to discuss trade and investment opportunities in the country and continent at large.

He described Togo’s economic vision as being in line with Afreximbank’s strategy to promote intra-African trade and intensify the continent’s industrialisation and pledged the bank’s readiness to provide financing to promote trade and the development of trade-facilitating infrastructure in Togo.

Oramah said that the accompanying business leaders were keen to explore opportunities to set up joint ventures and to invest into concessions.

The country’s Minister of Economy and Finance, Sani Yaya and his Infrastructure counterpart, Ninsao Gnofam, described the Lomé port as the driving force for Togo’s trade growth and as a sub-regional economic integration tool, serving as the transit point for more than 80 per cent of the country’s trade flows and servicing nearby landlocked countries like Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger.

But Oramah assured that the bank would use its arrangement with international partners to finance the supply of mining and agricultural equipment and to set-up processing facilities for potash for fertilisers, while African oil and gas firms could come in the construction of storage and logistics facilities for petroleum products.

Already, Minister of Trade, Industry and Tourism, Bernadette Legzim-Balouki, presented the bank’s delegation with tourism and hospitality projects, including the construction of luxury leisure resorts and conferencing facilities along the Togolese coastline and the building of eco-friendly bush and wildlife resorts on sustainable development concepts.

Oramah pledged that the bank would explore it’s Construction/Tourism Relay Facility, designed to provide financing to equip Africa with world-class tourism facilities, to see how it could be implemented in Togo in collaboration with business leaders and investors.