Microfinance Focus, November 8, 2011: International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group, announced that Mexican bank, BanBajío, has joined its Global Trade Finance Program. IFC’s $3 billion Global Trade Finance Program aims to expand access to trade finance for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Mexico. It supports trade with emerging markets worldwide by providing partial or full guarantees for risk mitigation.

BanBajío, founded in 1994 in the city of León, is a regional bank with significant presence in the northern, western, and central regions of Mexico. It is the first bank in Mexico focused on the small- and medium-enterprise market to join the program. By joining IFC’s trade finance program as an issuing bank, BanBajío hopes to be able to expand trade-finance solutions to small and medium enterprises in key export and import sectors. “This new relationship with the IFC Global Trade Finance Program will help us increase our capacity to provide trade financing to our small and medium enterprise clients and also increase access to new markets around the world,” said Carlos de la Cerda Serrano, CEO of Banco del Bajio.

IFC’s Global Trade Finance Program has issued more than $3.9 billion in guarantees to facilitate trade flows in Latin America and the Caribbean since its inception in the region in 2006. Its network in the region includes 58 issuing banks in 21 countries and nearly 70 percent of the guarantees benefited local small and midsize businesses and supported interregional trade flows among emerging-market nations. The program has issued $12 billion in guarantees worldwide. Latin America and the Caribbean has been the most active region for the past three fiscal years, representing about a third of the program’s global volume.