Time for a European public export credit insurance programme?
(Euroactive Foundation, Brussels, 16 April 2020) [An argument for European coordination of export credit. To bolster competition from China?] Over the last decade, public export credit insurance has become one of the major instruments of trade policy, used to support and encourage exports. According to the figures of Berne Union members, public credit insurance covered more than one trillion US dollars in new transactions in 2018, writes Matija Vodoplav, a French PhD student. Despite the strong public support that exporters from some countries have, in particular in East Asia, European exporters do not benefit from support at the EU level and are facing a mosaic of national public export credit insurance programmes. [He believes] that policymakers should examine the possibility of establishing a European public export credit insurance programmes that could provide risk cover, in addition to national programmes, for extra-EU exports from all member states. The OECD estimates that in one decade its support surged from USD 3 billion in 2002 to USD 397 billion in 2013. The US ECA estimates that in 2018, the largest providers of public export credit insurance for the short-term export transactions to OECD and non-OECD countries, after China, were Korea, Japan, Canada, India and Russia, while Germany, the largest EU economy, came in sixth. Export credit has also been one of the pillars of China’s Belt and Road initiative where, according to official figures found on the Sinosure’s website, by the end of 2017, the total insured amount granted by Sinosure for projects related to the initiative was almost $510 billion.