The present global financial crisis is having a major impact on manufacturing exporters, but help is at hand.
CONSIDER this situation: your SME has a growing business producing machinery for a niche industry. You have a keen overseas buyer, but there are two obstacles to closing the deal.
One is that your buyer proposes to make payment by documentary Letter of Credit, but your Australian bank won’t confirm a Letter of Credit issued by the buyer’s overseas bank.
The other is that because of the high cost of the machine, the buyer wants to spread his/her payments over a number of years. This isn’t feasible for you, as it would put too much strain on your working capital.
A Documentary Credit Guarantee may help solve both these problems.
In the current uncertain economic environment, an exporter who relies on documentary Letters of Credit to receive payments from overseas buyers may encounter difficulties.
Credit in financial markets is tight and banks are increasingly risk-averse, and this is reflected in their unwillingness to confirm Letters of Credit issued by banks they are unfamiliar with or in jurisdictions they consider higher risk.
There is also a growing reluctance among banks to confirm Letters of Credit which have a term of more than a few months.
If your bank is unwilling to confirm a documentary Letter of Credit issued by your buyer’s overseas bank for export contract payments, talk to EFIC about providing a Documentary Credit Guarantee to your bank.
Under the guarantee, EFIC takes on the risk that the buyer’s bank won’t pay your bank under the Letter of Credit. As EFIC’s guarantee secures payment under the Letter of Credit, it enables your bank to confirm that it will make export contract payments to you.
This can help to increase your confidence that when you present your bank with documents required by the Letter of Credit, showing that you have performed the export contract, you will get paid.
The added confidence that you’ll get paid, and therefore that your working capital won’t be stretched, may allow you to offer extended payment terms to an overseas buyer. This, in turn, can make your contract bid more competitive.
The Letter of Credit may be structured so that although your buyer makes payments to its bank over several years, your bank will pay you under the Letter of Credit when you deliver the goods and provide the appropriate documents.
A Documentary Credit Guarantee from EFIC is usually available for export contracts of between $1m and $10m, making it accessible to SME exporters producing capital goods such as equipment or machinery which have a high unit cost.
In addition, EFIC has reduced its minimum term for a Documentary Credit Guarantee and will now consider providing a guarantee for documentary Letters of Credit issued for export contracts with a payment term of 180 days or longer.
Applications for guarantees are considered on a case by case basis.
For more information about our financial and insurance solutions, please contact us on 1800 887 588.