Singaporean firms who wish to venture overseas can now have the World Bank Group’s full suite of services at their disposal to assist them in their internationalisation plans.
The World Bank and its member agencies, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (Miga), have established their offices in Singapore.
According to Kevin Lu; Miga’s Singapore-based Asia-Pacific regional director, the World Bank group aims to assist Singaporean companies with expansion abroad. He said that as they expand to frontier markets, Miga will be there to assist them and manage the political risk, which is usually beyond their commercial considerations.
He added that in emerging markets, infrastructure development is a high priority and private enterprises therefore need to understand the role of public finance in such projects and how a government intends to spend in these areas.
The World Bank, he explained, works with governments on the project development area.
“The World Bank, IFC and Miga all play different roles in that spectrum and Miga’s role particularly is to provide credit enhancement for this financing to go forward,” Mr Lu said.
