Ghana secured $450 million African Trade Insurance Agency (ATI)-backed insurance cover for projects and trade-related transactions in various sectors as of the end of May 2022.

With an insured portfolio of trade and investments across Africa valued at $6.6billion in 2021, ATI – a multilateral insurer – continues to serve in bridging in the gap by providing risk insurance on the African continent between sovereigns and investors as well as creditors and suppliers.

Speaking at a media engagement, Chief Executive and Chairman of African Trade Insurance Agency, Manuel Moses said it has received many requests from the private sector and sovereign nations.

“There have been many requests both from the private sector and the sovereign. Our accumulative exposure from projects that we have done in Ghana at the end of May 2022 are worth about $450 million. It’s early days yet but there has been massive response from the country”.

 “We are a price taker. For example if there’s a trader selling goods to a customer on credit and there’s another person saying ‘should the trader lose the money, they are willing to give a portion of the money to the trader irrespective of what happens to the buyer’. So the discussion happens between us (African Trade Insurance Agency) and the issuer, given that we refund some of the money lost by a business or country.”

Mr. Moses also revealed that his outfit made profit of $34.84 million in 2021.

According to him, the agency made a total of $6.6 billion as gross income.

“All 20 member countries and the 12 institutional stakeholders contributed money to the ATI. Altogether, that amount of money is now worth $516 million and used in the insurance model, we have managed to leverage that amount to do business worth $6.6 billion,” he disclosed.

The Agency said it is looking forward to insure African countries including Ghana to enable them fully take advantage of the African Continental Free Trade Area.

According to Mr. Moses, de-risking businesses to trade is one of his outfit’s objectives, hence it will support Ghana and other countries to boost trading activities.

“We do basically de-risking. What we mean is, investors or traders wanting to trade among themselves sometimes do it over open credit, but every now and then the traders may over expose the customers which may result in the inability on the part of customers to pay. That’s when we come in to give the seller some comfort by insuring them and encouraging them to sell on credit as they can always rely on us when something goes wrong.”

“Putting it in context with AfCFTA, one of the aims of the agreement is to promote intra-African trade and we believe we operate on the same tangent,” he highlighted.