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PROJECT AND STRUCTURED FINANCE

Ex-Im Bank offers a range of financing solutions for U.S. exporters and their international customers. Limited recourse (project) and structured financing are two options that offer maximum flexibility for project sponsors and help U.S. exporters compete globally in natural resource and infrastructure sectors.

Ex-Im Bank can consider limited recourse project financing in most countries and has no country or project dollar limits.

In either project or structured finance, Ex-Im Bank has two primary goals:

To maximize U.S. company participation in the transaction in order to support U.S. jobs; and

To lend responsibly into creditworthy projects in order to protect the interests of our "shareholders," the U.S. taxpayers.

Although Ex-Im Bank's Project Finance Division was created less than ten years ago, we were doing "structured" deals for many years. Now these two functions are being handled jointly by the Structured Finance Division under Vice President Barbara O`Boyle.

Limited Recourse Project Finance

Ex-Im Bank's limited recourse project finance is an arrangement in which Ex-Im Bank lends to newly created project companies and looks to the project's future cash flows as our source of repayment instead of relying directly on foreign governments, financial institutions or established corporations for repayment of the debt.

This financing arrangement is especially appropriate where hard currency revenues can be captured offshore or long-term off-take contracts insure project cash flows. Ex-Im Bank will work with project developers or equity participants to develop a structure that can be sustained throughout the project's operations.

Ex-Im Bank is also looking at other innovative structures such as risk sharing with suppliers and reinsurance in order to facilitate transactions in important industry sectors that may not meet these criteria.

Structured Finance

Through "structured finance," Ex-Im Bank can consider existing companies overseas as potential borrowers based on their creditworthiness as reflected on their balance sheet and other sources of collateral or security enhancements.

Ex-Im Bank has done structured transactions such as multiple-country fiber-optic cable, oil and gas projects, air traffic control, telecommunications and manufacturing entities.

Program Benefits

Ex-Im Bank's project and structured finance features many benefits, including:

Responsiveness - You receive your letters of interest in seven days or less (and you can request them on line) or a preliminary project letter within 45 days of formally applying for financing.

Transparency - You can estimate our exposure fees, get detailed application information, and look at all of Ex-Im Bank's published documentation (including environmental guidelines, country limitations, and project criteria). See links on this page.

Availability - We have no country or project limits.

We are also working to improve our program in many areas, including:

Coverage - Offering comprehensive coverage for a greater variety of projects.

Dependability - Converting past political risk only construction guarantees into comprehensive term loans and guarantees at "take out." We have successfully taken out more than 18 projects and have financed an additional 15 projects on a comprehensive basis through construction and operation.

Cooperation - Sharing financial and legal advisors with other lenders and initiating inter-creditor dialogues earlier in a project life cycle.

Creativity - Looking at alternatives to traditional, contractually based offtake arrangements that include risk sharing and unique structures in a diversity of challenging industry sectors. We may also be able to provide guarantees in non-traditional currencies.

An Award-Winning Program

Transactions supported by our Project Finance program are consistently selected for "Deal of the Year" awards. In the past three years, Ex-Im Bank projects have been awarded seven "Deal" citations by Project Finance magazine, including three in the first quarter of 2003: San Fernando Pipeline - Latin America Oil & Gas Deal of the Year; Nigeria LNG - Africa Oil & Gas Deal of the Year; and Nanhai Petrochemical - Chinese Development Oil & Gas Award.

Our ever-expanding pipeline of new deals would seem to indicate that we're on the right track. But we're not resting on our laurels. We look forward to a strengthened dialogue with our customers in order to ensure that we are being responsive to our customers and our "shareholders."

Contact:

Project and Structured Finance Division
Export-Import Bank of the United States
811 Vermont Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20571

U.S. Toll-Free Number - (800) 565-3946 (EXIM) ext. 3690
Worldwide Number - (202) 565-3690
TDD - (202) 565-3377
E-mail - structuredfinance@exim.gov