Export credit and the agencies that carry the risk

Selling equipment into a market like this one is rarely limited by the product. It is limited by whether the buyer can pay, and by whether the seller can wait.

What an export credit agency does

It insures or guarantees payment on an export transaction, so that a bank will finance it. The exporter is paid on delivery; the buyer pays the bank over several years; the agency covers the bank if the buyer does not.

The agency is a state institution, or state-backed, because no commercial insurer will take multi-year buyer risk in a difficult market at a price anyone will pay.

How the pricing works

Countries are classified by risk, and the premium follows the classification. That classification is published, it changes slowly, and it determines whether a transaction is viable before any negotiation begins.

An improvement in a country's classification is therefore worth a great deal to every exporter selling into it, and it is a policy objective that rarely gets discussed as one.

What it unlocks in practice

Capital equipment sales: machinery, plant, vehicles, energy equipment, medical technology. Anything where the buyer needs to pay over the life of the asset rather than on delivery.

Reconstruction will be full of exactly these transactions.

What a buyer should know

Ask the supplier which agency covers their country and start that conversation early. The agency's requirements shape the contract, the documentation and sometimes the technical specification, and retrofitting them onto a signed deal is expensive.

An exporter can offer a buyer two-year terms not out of their own balance sheet but through an export credit agency — and that explains most of the difference between a small supplier and a large one. A firm that can offer terms wins the tender on conditions rather than on price. What a Ukrainian buyer should know is that asking the seller for terms is really asking the agency of the seller's country.