The Export-Import Bank of Korea (Korea Eximbank) won the Presidential Commendation for its Dedication to Nurturing SMEs at the 2022 Convention for SMEs held at the Presidential Office Complex in Yongsan District, Seoul, on May 25.
Korea Eximbank has been steeply increasing funding for SMEs over the past decade. Last year, it peaked at a record high of 30 trillion won, which compares with around 20 trillion won in 2012. The funding for the first half of this year is expected to total 16.6 trillion won, making it on track to break the record again.
The growth rate stands at 45 percent, which was much higher than the 30 percent export growth rate of SMEs in Korea during the same period. Accordingly, last year the bank‘s financial support to SMEs took up 50.2 percent of its total support, exceeding the amount for large companies and reaching an all-time high in itself.
The proportion of loans to SMEs is estimated to reach 53 percent as of the end of June.
The expansion of Korea Eximbank’s support is believed to have greatly contributed to SMEs achieving record-high export performance (190 billion dollars in 2020 and 228.4 billion dollars in 2021) despite the disruption in logistics and in securing raw materials last year.
Korea Eximbank has been making efforts to increase support for SMEs in their exports, including launching THE SME Growth Support Team, a team dedicated to SMEs, and strengthening cooperation with other institutions.
As a result, the number of SMEs benefiting from the bank’s support program surged by 41 percent from 4,316 in 2018 to 6,105 in 2021.
For starters, the bank has focused its assistance on export beginners without sufficient experience in exports (or SMEs with annual exports of less than five million dollars) so they can grow into small but strong players in the global market.
As a result, the amount of support for the export beginners doubled year-on-year to three trillion won, and the number of the companies receiving the bank’s support increased by 36 percent from 2,138 to 2,899 in a year.
Korea Eximbank also operates the Hidden Champion Program which nurtures SMEs with promising technologies (250 companies) to help them realize their potential in exports.
In order to identify and expand support to promising SME exporters, the bank has recently signed MOUs with several related institutions which have corporate and technology data of SMEs, including the Korea Venture Business Corporation, the Korea Industrial Complex Corporation, the Korea Credit Guarantee Fund, and the Technology Guarantee Fund.
In addition, Korea Eximbank increased its international on-lending facility for SMEs, providing indirect support for their export and import transactions.
It partnered with many commercial banks and their branches to complement its limited network (13 offices), leading to a sharp rise in the number of SMEs using the on-lending program.
Korea Eximbank is also running the Win-Win Financial Program. Under the program the bank extends loans to large companies to settle their payments for supplies delivered by their partner SMEs so that both large and small companies can grow together.
Meanwhile, Korea Eximbank announced on May 29 that it held the Meeting for Korean Nuclear Power Plant Exporters at its headquarters in Seoul on May 27 to listen to Korean companies’ nuclear power export plans and explain Korea Eximbank’s financial support system for them.
The event was attended by executives in charge of overseas business at nuclear power plant export companies such as KEPCO, KHNP, Doosan Enerbility and GS Energy, and officials from the Korea Nuclear Association for International Cooperation.
Korea Eximbank plans to provide preemptive and competitive finance to nuclear power plant exporters to help Korea secure global competitiveness in the nuclear power plant industry and make the nuclear power plant business Korea’s new growth driver.
Korea Eximbank spelled out its financial support to help Korean companies win large-scale nuclear power plant projects, financial solutions for the construction of new nuclear power plants and financial cooperation with Korean small module reactor (SMR) development companies for the export of SMR equipment and overseas SMR business development.
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