Happy centennial birthday UKEF: fit for the future?
report
posted on 2023-06-09, 18:37authored byKamala Dawar
• The 100 year-old UK export credit agency – UKEF - aims to ensure the necessary finance or insurance to support UK export opportunities. In seeking to leave the EU, the UK government has placed strategic importance on UKEF, as a vital component of its new export strategy. • However, aggressive competition in the official export credit support market has resulted in an increase in activity that lies outside of the main instruments regulating competition and sustainability in export finance terms – the OECD Arrangement and the Common Approaches. • By default, the WTO SCM agreement is increasingly the main legal discipline, despite its weakness in not covering trade in services or the sustainable development dimensions of official export credit support. Yet the playing field has become increasingly unruly because of the reluctance on the part of WTO Members to challenge potentially non-compliant export credit support measures. • The UK government is faced with the difficult choice between taking a strong pro-competition position domestically, or by fighting fire with fire and developing its own non-Arrangement type export credit programmes. This briefing paper argues that the former option is the more preferable for economic efficiency considerations and long-term competitiveness, even though it may result in a controversial reduced role for the UKEF. • The current economic slowdown in export growth coupled with the rise of unruly export credit support programmes calls for heightened cooperation among Export Credit Agency (ECA) governments within international bodies such as the WTO, OECD and the International Working Group on Export Credit Support. There is a collective interest in preventing publicly-funded, yet opaque, subsidy wars in export credit terms and conditions, with negative economic, political, social and environmental repercussions.