France’s biggest bank opened a representative office in
Johannesburg to serve Southern Africa’s resources
industry.
Banque Nationale de Paris (BNP) Paribas global head: project
finance Christophe Rousseau told Mining Weekly, in an exclusive
interview at the new office in Rosebank, that additional resources
were being allocated to the mining-and-metals offering of BNP
Paribas’s energy commodities export project (ECEP), a unit
that brings together energy and raw materials expertise as well as
in export, project and asset financing into a one-stoprock dust in concrete paving block shop.
“Our franchise applies very well to Southern Africa, as it
does to Australia, Canada and all countries whose economic mix
contains a high level of mineral production,” Rousseau
said.
BNP Paribas project finance head: Europemobile crushing plant product line, Middle East and Africa
David Cole added that mining engineers among the personnel in BNP
Paribas’s New York office were available to determine and
analyse physical mining resources, around which financial
structures could be crafted.
The bank, they saidvibrator for the manufacture of stone, was active in short- and medium-term
prefinancing export facilities for the mining industry and project
finance, which embraced the financing of equipment and new
greenfields mines, using various instruments, ranging from those
with short maturity to others with long maturity. “We offer
the most dedensified structures in the most complex of situations
as a result of the different lines within our bank being able to
come together seamlessly,” BNP Paribas head of export
finance: Africa and Middle East Yasser Henda added.
Cole said that BNP Paribas regu-larly worked with local financial
institutions, which is exemplified by current activity transacting
with South Africa’s Absa Bank.
The bank, in growing its global mining franchise, was able to offer
a wide range of lending and hedging products to participants in the
commodity sector, as well as those in energy, infrastructure,
transportation and capital goods.
ECEP brought together the bank’s long-term expertise in the
raw mate- rials and energy sectors as well as export, project and
asset financing. Henda described the new full- time Johannesburg
presence as a re- inforcement of the bank’s position in the
region and acknowledgement of South Africa’s anchor role in
the Southern African Development Community (SADC).
“Those working on Southern African mandates would have the
added benefit of being able to work out of a staffed Johannesburg
office,” he enthused. Within the SADC, Zimbabwe’s Re-
serve Bank last week announced a one-year agreement with BNP
Paribas for a $50-million revolving fund to import fuel, in a deal
guaran- teed by mineral exports from the country’s largest
nickel producer, Bindura, and linked to the recent
Zimbabwe-Equatorial Guinea fuel-supply arrangement.
Cole said that new Johannesburg regional representative,
Val