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Survey: Trade finance situation in APEC to ease

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2009-11-09 18:44

SINGAPORE: A survey released here on Monday showed that 12 out of the 19 surveyed Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) economies expected that the trade financing situation should ease over the next six months.

The survey, the second conducted in 2009, provided an indication of how the current trade finance situation has changed across APEC economies since the first survey in July.

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Of the surveyed economies, 12 said that the trade financing situation has improved since July. The same number of economies thought there was no trade finance problem, or that the problem was not serious.

The most commonly cited reasons for tightness in trade financing were increased risk aversion of financial institutions towards companies and higher perceived counterparty risks of banks, the same with the July survey.

However, general liquidity shortage in the economy is now less of a problem compared to July, down from seven economies to four.

In particular, of the 17 economies that faced trade financing problems in their economy, 14 economies noted that risk aversion of financial institutions towards companies had increased since the onset of the global economic crisis late last year. In the meantime, more economies felt that the trade financing problem was precipitated by higher capital costs or increased capital requirements of banks, as compared to July.

The survey was conducted by Singapore, which chairs the APEC meetings this year, and was shared at the APEC Concluding Senior Officials' Meeting (CSOM) held here Monday.