Washington, D.C., November 7, 2011
—IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, today announced that Banco del Bajío S.A., known as BanBajío, has joined its Global Trade Finance Program to expand access to trade finance for small and medium enterprises in Mexico.
IFC’s Global Trade Finance Program supports trade with emerging markets worldwide by providing partial or full guarantees for risk mitigation.
“This new relationship with the IFC Global Trade Finance Program will help us increase our capacity to provide trade financing to our small and medium enterprise clients and also increase access to new markets around the world,” said Carlos de la Cerda Serrano, CEO of Banco del Bajio.
By joining IFC’s trade finance program as an issuing bank, BanBajío will be able to expand trade-finance solutions to small and medium enterprises in key export and import sectors. BanBajío, founded in 1994 in the city of León, is a regional bank with significant presence in the northern, western, and central regions of Mexico. It is the first bank in Mexico focused on the small- and medium-enterprise market to join the program.
“We welcome BanBajío to IFC’s Global Trade Finance Program,” said Roberto Albisetti, IFC Country Manager for Mexico and Central America. “This deal is an example of IFC’s efforts to provide integrated solutions for financing importers and exporters, and our institution’s commitment to strengthen and foster the development of the Mexican financial market.”
IFC’s Global Trade Finance Program has issued more than $3.9 billion in guarantees to facilitate trade flows in Latin America and the Caribbean since its inception in the region in 2006. IFC’s network in the region includes 58 issuing banks in 21 countries. Nearly 70 percent of the guarantees benefited local small and midsize businesses and supported interregional trade flows among emerging-market nations. The program has issued $12 billion in guarantees worldwide. Latin America and the Caribbean has been the most active region for the past three fiscal years, representing about a third of the program’s global volume.
For more information about the program, contact Antonio Alves, Principal Investment Officer, Short-Term Finance Department, Latin America and Caribbean Region, at
Aalves1@ifc.org
, or visit
www.ifc.org/gtfp
.
About IFC
IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, is the largest global development institution focused exclusively on the private sector. We help developing countries achieve sustainable growth by financing investment, providing advisory services to businesses and governments, and mobilizing capital in the international financial markets. In fiscal 2011, amid economic uncertainty across the globe, we helped our clients create jobs, strengthen environmental performance, and contribute to their local communities—all while driving our investments to an all-time high of nearly $19 billion. For more information, visit
www.ifc.org
.
About Banco del Bajío
BanBajío is a regional bank with 263 branches around the country. It focuses on three principal business lines—small and medium enterprises, agribusiness, and commercial banking. With total assets and equity of $7.08 billion equivalent and $866 million respectively, BanBajío is the eighth-largest bank in Mexico in terms of total assets and total loan portfolio. The bank was built with the support of a strong group of senior executives recruited from leading Mexican banks, most of whom are still working for BanBajío.
For more information, visit
www.bb.com.mx
.
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