Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, has reiterated the need for a regional approach to enhance the competitiveness of Africa.
According to him, this will help create conditions that are conducive to increase trade investments on the continent and ensure higher economic growth.
Addressing the 22nd Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the African Trade Insurance (ATI) Agency on Thursday, June 23, 2022, the Vice-President further said such strategies will help the continent exploit the synergies to speed up integration into the globalized economy.
“Regional economic integration will not only help our countries access the expanded regional market within, but will also facilitate global competitiveness. It cannot be overemphasized that the continent needs to play an increasing role in the global economy so as to maximize the opportunities available from the interconnected world economy,” he said.
He also acknowledged ATI’s interventions in complementing the efforts of African governments in sustaining growth despite the Global COVID-19 Pandemic and recent macroeconomic shocks.
“The creation of ATI by African Governments is part of this regional approach to enhancing the competitiveness of Africa and moving towards self-reliance. The interventions of ATI become doubly important in complementing the efforts of Governments in sustaining growth and navigating economic shocks,’ he said.
On the issue of ATI’s 2021 financial performance, Manuel Moses, CEO of ATI, said the Agency has shown great resilience and achieved growth in both its top line and bottom line positions.
“Our financial results for 2021 reflect a sustainable year improvement in our financial indicators, despite the profound effect of the COVID-19 pandemic that impacted all businesses and countries globally. Underwriting revenues registered a growth of 14 per cent or $143 million over the previous year. Underwriting profit also increased by 11 per cent from $29 million to $33 million in 2021. Our gross exposures, which reflect the absolute contract values of the insurance covers that we have provided, also increased from $6.3 billion to $6.6 billion as of the end of December 2021,” he noted.
The African Trade Insurance Agency has been in operation for over 20 years – designing innovative financial products to harness Africa’s unique trade, investment and development opportunities.
This is done essentially by facilitating trade and investment finance to support economic activities and mitigate political and commercial risks associated with trade and investments in Africa.
In 2021, ATI insured a total portfolio of trade and investments across Africa valued, at US$6.6 billion, and since its inception, it has supported over US$71 billion worth of investments and trade across the continent.
