Turkish Eximbank, a state-owned bank that supports exporters, will sign a $200 million loan agreement with its Chinese counterpart, China Development Bank. Turkish Eximbank General Manager Adnan Yıldırım will sign the agreement during a trip to China on Aug. 11-15 where he will meet with officials of the Chinese bank and hold talks to develop mutual cooperation.

In a previous statement about the agreement, Yıldırım said that the loan is in line with diversifying the funding possibilities of Turkish Eximbank and increasing the medium-long term loan portfolio as it has three years of maturity.

$22 billion financing support from Eximbank in seven months

Meanwhile, Turkish Eximbank said Friday its total financing support for exporters in the January-July period on a foreign currency basis soared to $22 billion from $18.6 billion, marking an increase of 18 percent compared to the same period last year.

While cash loans amounted to $13.8 billion, credit insurance constituted $8.2 billion.

As a result of support provided by the bank's 28 credit programs, credit stock increased by 38 percent, reaching TL 70 billion in July, with the fastest increase in the past four years compared to the same period of the previous year.

According to the latest data, the volume of loans in the banking sector surged by 23 percent on an annual basis.

According to the statement released by the bank, Turkish Eximbank also offers receivables insurance that allows exporters abroad to carry out activities without taking commercial and political risks.

In this area, the shipment insured in the January-July period neared $8.2 billion, a 35 percent rise compared to the same period last year.

Turkish Eximbank increased the number of exporters it reached in this period by 12 percent in loans and 18.2 percent in insurance.

In the past year, the number of the bank's credit customers has increased nearly 12 percent to 8,739. On the other hand, the number of insured exporters grew by 18.2 percent to 2,723 in the same period.

Export credits constitute 97 percent of Turkish Eximbank's assets. Moreover, according to data for June, 43.1 percent of all export credits in the banking sector belong to Turkish Eximbank, which provided 43.1 percent of export loans in the banking sector.

According to the statement, taking into consideration the performance of Turkish Eximbank in terms of realizing its targets in the first seven months, the bank should be able to support 26 percent of $39.8 billion in total financial support and exports by year's end.

In this period, Turkish Eximbank provided $2.7 billion in funds from a wide geographical area, supranational institutions and the world's leading banks through syndication loans and bilateral commercial loans.

Medium-long term funding is becoming more and more important in accordance with the change in the balance sheet structure of Turkish Eximbank. While $900 million of the funds provided in this framework are medium to long term, Turkish Eximbank is assessing to export the Eurobond and/or sukuk for the first time in its history in line with developments in its loan portfolio.

Turkish Eximbank is being restructured in the 30th year of its foundation to better fulfill its export support mission. In line with this, a structure has been created to directly work with exporters via the transformation actualized in the organization structure of the bank.

With its structure strengthened by the formation of marketing, allocation and operation units, the bank became able to issue credits without taking a bank guarantee letter from exporters, taking the Credit Guarantee Fund (CGF) bail. In this respect, a significant increase in loans is expected in the rest of the year.