Slovak state export insurance and banking institution Eximbanka is coming up with a modern vision of supporting domestic exports. And it has twice as much money to do it than before. The company has increased its share capital by a quarter of a billion euros and is modernising its product base. Exporters in the Czech Republic can also benefit from this, which it wants to attract to export not only to Slovakia, but also to third markets – in cooperation with EGAP.
Rastislav Podhorec has been leading Eximbank since last November, and in that time a number of remarkable changes have taken place in our neighbours. The institution is now the strongest it has been since its inception in 1997, and its chairman has plans in place to take the institution, as he puts it, into a new age. ” In your Czech Republic, the government in principle opens its doors to its entrepreneurs, but we haven’t had anything like that for a long time. Now the situation is different. Our government’s strategy is that it wants to help Slovak exports. This goes hand in hand with the need to strengthen Eximbank with capital. I have worked very hard with the Minister of Finance and others to get this idea adopted at all levels. In the end, it was 100 percent successful. We had 260 million in share capital and we strengthened it by 250 million, so we are at half a billion,” calculates Rastislav Podhorec, chairman and CEO of Eximbanka. But it doesn’t stop there. It is already working with ministries on an amendment to the law that will bring the institution and especially its products closer to the current needs of international trade. The Eximbanka Act from the mid-1990s has not changed much in the past 30 years since its original wording. “But the global world and trade have changed and at some points we are bound by the fact that we do not have products that can respond to the new times. I want us to be able to make more modern products, to react in a much more flexible way, so that we can also serve, for example, the digital companies that Slovakia has,” Podhorec explains.
More Slovak-Czech cooperation
So far, the Slovak ECA’s options not only for exporters but also for their financing banks have been determined by its capital endowment. And it goes without saying that the role and position of the institution on the market is now also growing significantly. Its management also draws inspiration from the Czech Republic in anchoring the institution. “My goal is for Slovak banks to use us like they use you in the Czech Republic, because that was not the rule. But it won’t happen overnight,” Podhorec says. The Slovak “Eximka” should thus establish itself more strongly as a partner of private sector banks and insurance companies and more often supplement their offer with services related mainly to exporting to demanding markets. Plans for the near future also include Slovak-Czech cooperation, currently driven primarily by the project for the completion of the two nuclear units at Dukovany and, together with this, possible follow-up opportunities. “There are opportunities, but we cannot talk about them in detail now. These are energy, the defence industry, and we are also looking ahead to nuclear power in connection with the decisions in Dukovany and Jaslovské Bohunice, which are expected in the next few years,” outlines the head of Eximbanka. He considers the Slovak-Czech partnership important. Major and smaller industrial groups in both countries are often connected on both sides of the border and often have branches in their neighbours. “Very often there are business cases that contain both a Czech and a Slovak component, so cooperation between our export agencies will grow. And we are talking specifically about exports to Africa, for example, where the opportunity is great,” he adds.
Reconstruction of Ukraine
Like others, support for domestic exporters in Slovakia has to cope with the impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The Agency seeks to promote and maintain exports to Ukraine in the form and volume they were before the war. Like EGAP, it is succeeding in bringing the figures back to pre-war levels. “It was decided that we would give 10 million euros to support Ukraine. We had conditions, of course, such as that they were traditional partners, verified exporters and so on. We don’t have a special product for that, it’s a set of existing insurance products,” Podhoretz explains. These are mostly companies from the food, packaging, engineering or metallurgical sectors, i.e. exporters whose exports were supported even before the war. And, as in the Czech Republic, none of the deals has yet ended in an insurance claim. Maintaining trade lines is important not only from a humanitarian point of view. It is also to play a key role in the country’s post-war reconstruction. The huge investment in war-torn Ukraine, which is widely anticipated, is being hailed as the project of the century. That is why everyone wants to be in the best possible position to start. The fact that the governments of Slovakia and Ukraine meet together every six months, for example, also speaks in favour of a better “pole position” for Slovak exporters in this respect. “From the Ukrainian side, a list of projects has gradually emerged, of what they would need to reconstruct. The Ukrainians have defined in their lists what specifically they need to repair. From these, the contractors, like Slovak and Czech companies, will choose,” Podhorec explains. And his agency is ready for the challenges. It plans to focus on projects ranging in size from €10 million to €100 million.
Interview for the magazine Pojištěno EGAPEM Export Guarantee and Insurance Corporation.