As supply chains become seamless across geographies, businesses often outgrow domestic sources of funding. In addition, banks have been forced by regulators to be more constrained in their lending to SMEs due to changes in the amount of regulatory capital that they have to hold against such exposures.
Rasmala said that a global shortage of funding for trade-related transactions in specific segments of the market, coupled with the increasing globalisation of supply chains, has led to robust demand from businesses for short-term, cross-border, working capital funding.
Rasmala explained that the Fund provides its investors with access to investments in short-term, structured trade exposures, including but not limited to commodity finance, supply chain finance and export finance.
The Fund has to date invested across 31 countries, including the UAE, the US , Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, the UK and China. It has provided loans to businesses in 22 industries, including agriculture, chemicals, mining, energy and the automotive sector.
Transactions invested by the Fund include a short-term financing facility for a listed Brazilian agribusiness to fund the purchase of agricultural inputs secured against a crop which has been pre-sold to a USD 40 billion global agribusiness and food company
It also includes a financing facility for a USD 1.6 billion revenue commodities processing and trading business, for the purchase, transport and sale of commodities, including rice, sugar, grains, iron ore and coal to their customers across the globe.
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