Ex-Im Bank Signs City/State Partnership With California Trade Association, Supporting Thousands of Jobs

WASHINGTON, March 25, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank) announced a new marketing partnership for the Monterey Bay International Trade Association (MBITA), a non-profit organization in northern California.  The City/State Partners program contract will accelerate export business by connecting Bank products and services to MBITA's network of entrepreneurs and financial institutions in the counties around San Francisco and its ports.

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Members of MBITA represent small and mid-sized businesses throughout the tri-county region of the Monterey Bay and Silicon Valley.  This association helped start the BAYTRADE program in 1995, which generated more than six thousand new jobs during its first five years.  MBITA also manages the TradePort Collaborator, an intranet of more than 140 trade promotion service professionals who represent more than 60,000 exporters, importers, trade promotion service providers, and private investors.

"By entering this partnership with MBITA, Ex-Im Bank joins forces with thousands of experienced businesses that share our aim of expanding U.S. exports and creating jobs," said Ex-Im Bank Chairman and President Fred P. Hochberg.  "For eighteen years, MBITA has linked business resources with clients throughout the world.  Now through our partnership, the Bank adds expanded access to its services and products to help accelerate export sales and job growth."

Tony Livoti, president of MBITA, explained why Ex-Im Bank's City/State Partnership is a boon to high-tech exporters:  "MBITA's and TradePort's clients and members tend to be on the cutting edge of technologies," he said.  "Sometimes they feel an export-financed transaction into a new foreign marketplace gives them a better footing to grow their companies, as opposed to using their own financing to break into our very competitive domestic markets."

The Monterey Bay trade association started in 1984 as a volunteer-run business, and upgraded to a 501 C-6 corporation in 1995 when it became a founding member of a public-private sector export promotion program called BAYTRADE.  The U.S. Department of Commerce helped to support the program, which researched the international trade needs of employers across sixteen Congressional districts.  BAYTRADE consolidated its large service and knowledge network into an established global trade website managed by MBITA as TradePort.org for the past six years.  MBITA now is a self-sustaining organization funded by memberships, corporate sponsorship, events, and fee-based trade promotion services.  It is developing new services such as the California Industrial Cluster Tour and MBITA Strategic Alliance Service.

The purpose of the City/State Partners program is to ensure that the Bank's export finance programs are more accessible to small and medium-sized business through the help of local, state, and regional economic development and business support organizations.

Ex-Im Bank offers to Bay-area enterprises expanded access to products such as its Global Credit Express, which helps exporters acquire low-cost working capital up to $500,000, as well as Express Insurance, which simplifies small business access to export credit risk insurance on their foreign accounts receivable.  The Bank has designed an array of low-cost loans, guarantees, export credit insurance, and supply-chain financing structures to enable both small and large businesses to export globally without fear of nonpayment.

ABOUT EX-IM BANK:

Ex-Im Bank is an independent federal agency that helps to create and maintain U.S. jobs by filling gaps in private export financing at no cost to American taxpayers. In the past five years (from Fiscal Year 2008), Ex-Im Bank has earned for U.S. taxpayers nearly $1.6 billion above the cost of operations. The Bank provides a variety of financing mechanisms, including working capital guarantees, export-credit insurance and financing to help foreign buyers purchase U.S. goods and services.

Ex-Im Bank approved a total of $35.8 billion in authorizations in FY 2012 – an all-time Ex-Im record. This total includes more than $6.1 billion directly supporting small-business export sales – also an Ex-Im record. The Bank's authorizations in FY 2012 are supporting an estimated $50 billion in U.S. export sales and about 255,000 American jobs in communities across the country.  For more information, visit www.exim.gov.

SOURCE Export-Import Bank of the United States

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