Trade and export finance leaders from across Asia and beyond descended on Singapore for Asia Trade Finance Week 2013, which took place at the Raffles City Convention Centre, Swissôtel the Stamford on September 2-4.

Recognised as the world’s largest trade finance gathering, the event welcomed over 550 finance heads from companies of all sizes and all manner of sectors to reassess the significance of Asia’s regional and global trade flows, as well as cast a keen eye on some of its most exciting and thriving markets. Held over three days, featuring various streams, workshops and networking functions and enjoying support from over 40 leading global institutions, the event assessed the previous year’s developments, placing strong emphasis on the trade and export priorities of the multinationals, SMEs and trading companies, as well as those tasked with financing them.

“Asia continues to provide perhaps the biggest success story in international trade, both in terms of ongoing industrial development across a range of countries but also with regard to opportunities found in a number of frontier markets,” said Jeff Ando, Head of Conference Production at GTR, organisers of the conference. “Furthermore, the growth of Singapore as Asia’s leading commodity hub, fuelled by the drive and vision of IE Singapore, has seen the city become home to many of the world’s biggest trading companies, providing the opportunity for high level engagement with senior decision makers”.

Discussions centred on a range of key issues, such as how exporters can best access frontier markets, the challenges faced in bridging Asia’s project and infrastructure financing gap, new ways of maximising intra-regional trade through the regional supply chain, fostering relationships with markets such as Latin-America and Africa, and the latest perspectives on Asia’s thriving trade credit and political risk market.

As organisers of Asia Trade Finance Week, GTR enjoys a strong presence in the local market, with offices in Singapore and recent expansion into Hong Kong further reflecting the region’s huge potential. “The scope of potential in Asia and the thirst for specialised knowledge and networking opportunities is unrivalled, with a key to success being regular contact on the ground,” says Rupert Sayer, CEO of GTR Asia. “It takes time to build personal relationships; here in Singapore we’ve invested a great deal of time in getting to know the various government organisations, trade associations and other public bodies around Southeast Asia in particular, all of whom have recognised the synergy between our mandate for developing Asian trade and their own activities.”

Strong emphasis was placed on networking and meaningful business interaction throughout the week, as well as knowledge sharing on the current business operating environment. Proceedings within the main conference part of the event included an opening keynote from Kathy Lai, Assistant CEO at IE Singapore, while the event also featured the GTR Asia ‘Leaders in Trade’ Awards on the afternoon of September 4.