Belarusian company BSW has received support for the purchase of steel teeming ladles from Russian company ORMETO-YUMZ through a bank-to-bank loan guaranteed by Exiar.

The US$600,000 loan was provided by Russia’s Transkapitalbank to Belarus’ Belagroprombank, and benefited from a two-year insurance policy from the Russian ECA. Hanieh Ferdowsi, managing director, international business development at Exiar, tells GTR that the risk was allocated on the Belarusian bank instead of the buyer.

Though Exiar recently opened its first international representative office in Minsk, this particular deal was arranged by the Moscow office.

Ferdowsi explains that the Minsk office is still very new, but will help Exiar achieve the great potential for increased ECA involvement between the two countries.

“A lot of people think we opened in Belarus just because we have a high exposure in the country, but one of the main drivers has actually been to originate new business and work more closely with the buyers. There are a lot of deals being done between Russian exporters and Belarusian buyers that we think we could be involved in, but either banks don’t come to us or the exporters don’t know about us, so we believe one of the important channel to reach Russian exporters is also about liaising with their buyers,” she says.

She adds that although the Minsk office’s work hasn’t so far resulted in the signing of a deal, the team has facilitated a number of deals by meeting with Belarusian buyers to obtain financials and assist with structuring. “For the origination it’s a bit too early to say, they are actively conducting meetings but it hasn’t led yet to a signing yet. But I am very confident that this will come.”