Ecobank and Bank of China partnership to boost trade

Kenya’s trade transactions with China and South Africa are set to grow even stronger as a local bank has signed an agreement with the Bank of China and is to start operations in South Africa.

With trade between Kenya and both China and South Africa growing tremendously in the last couple of years, the new agreement is expected to provide more leg room as it eliminates the lengthy transactional costs and charges currently faced by traders due to lack of a common banking services platform.

In China, Ecobank has partnered with Bank of China, a leading international bank allowing it to set up a trade desk in its operations in the country.

On the other hand, Ecobank has opened operations in South Africa which will ease financial transactions for businesses that conduct trade between Kenya and South Africa.

Kenya is a net importer from both China and South Africa.

According to the Central Bank of Kenya’s (CBK) latest Monthly Economic Review (MER) the country imports from China and South Africa accounted for 9.6 per cent and 9 per cent respectively for the overall import bill in the last one year.

As both countries are more industrialised than Kenya, the country’s imports largely constitutes finished consumable products, and machineries.

“We believe that having successfully managed banking operations across different African cultures, nationalities and languages, we have a competitive advantage in bringing these skills and competencies to bear on banking businesses in the eastern and southern African sub-regions”, said Albert Essien, Ecobank representative in South Africa.

“This agreement is mutually beneficial for it allows the Bank of China to cater more pointedly to their clients in Africa using the Ecobank platform while enabling Africa businesses to easily transact with their business counterparts in China”, said Mr Arnold Ekpe, Ecobank Group CEO.

With its significant level of investment in and trade with Africa, China is an increasingly big player in African economies.