Providing simple debt finance for the running of an existing business will be relatively straightforward – although the cost of such finance is likely to be higher and the lending terms generally more stringent – but when it comes to funds for capital expenditure including new project development and\/or acquisitions then it will be a different story.<\/p>\n
The approach of traditional bankers will be to scrutinise such projects much more rigorously than was the case in the past and to operate with smaller resources at hand, and with these available on generally much tougher terms.<\/p>\n
This message came across very clearly at the Private Capital & Ports Conference<\/i> held recently in London, and is based not just on banks having learnt the hard way but also the reality that many are still in the process of absorbing the “pain” from past transactions – ie. they are still in the midst of a struggle to stabilise their own operations.<\/p>\n
So who will come riding over the horizon to the rescue of the ports sector, just as to a limited extent export credit finance schemes and bond issues have done in the shipping world? Well clearly, what the Private Capital & Ports Conference<\/i> told us is that there is ongoing interest in the sector from private equity concerns and infrastructure funds and that to some extent they may be able to fill the finance gap.<\/p>\n
Of course, many of these entities operate distinct regimes as regards how much risk they are prepared to take – some only look at existing businesses and not new business start-ups and others have specific rules as to which countries they will deal in for example. But it is nevertheless interesting to note that since the early days of such companies involvement that there are parties that have come on the scene that are now prepared to accept a greater degree of risk where they see a proportionately higher degree of risk.<\/p>\n
The acid test in this case is Africa where it is now possible to see a select number of companies willing to deal in this region – sub-Saharan Africa and North Africa – and to contemplate not just the large transactions but also the relatively small ones. To some degree then help is at hand but the ports sector has to educate itself a\/<\/i> as to who these organisations are and b\/<\/i> how precisely they can help.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Just as the old paths in ship finance will not adequately meet future needs it is equally clear that the traditional banking sector will not be able to meet all the requirements of the international ports sector.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":1382,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-1381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-strategist"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1381"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1381\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1383,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1381\/revisions\/1383"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1381"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=1381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}