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Business Reporter 

Construction of African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank)’s Southern Africa Regional and Trade Centre head office in Harare is set to commence soon following the continental financial institution’s invitation of expressions of interest from contractors to build the complex. 

 To be built on a 12 000 square metres of land in Newlands, the mixed building complex will provide an integrated one stop shop for trade facilitation and information services as well as trade finance. 

It will also offer corporate office space, a conference and exhibition centre, innovation and incubation hub and a knowledge centre.

 Zimbabwe donated land where the complex will be built in 2017, which would help the transformation of the country into an intra-African trade hub, a centre of knowledge and information about the markets and a centre where major deals would be struck.

 In an expression of interest notice yesterday, the Pan-African bank said interested bidders should provide proof of experience of providing building services for similar projects with a combined value of US$50 million in the past five years.

 Afreximbank remains Zimbabwe’s major financier and has in recent years, provided facilities to both Government and the private sector worth billions of dollars.

 Afreximbank is a pan-African multilateral financial institution involved in financing and promoting intra and inter-African trade. The bank was established in October 1993 by African governments, private and institutional investors, and non-African investors. 

 Its two basic constitutive documents are the Establishment Agreement, which gives it the status of an international organisation, and the Charter, which governs its corporate structure and operations. Since 1994, it has approved more than US$67 billion in credit facilities for African businesses, of which US$7,2 billion was extend in 2018. Total assets stood at US$13,4 billion as at 31 December 2018.

The bank has facilitated promotion of intra-African trade in manufactures and effective participation of African entities in the continent’s extractive industries, supporting industrialisation, export development and diversification, expanding capacity and supporting SMEs to increase efficiencies.

It has also facilitated trade-enabling infrastructure, to support intra-African trade and industrialisation in Africa, and providing Trade Finance leadership.