General Electric Company Awarded Ex-Im Bank Sub-Saharan Africa Exporter of the Year

WASHINGTON, April 4, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- General Electric Company (GE) today received the Sub-Saharan Africa Exporter of the Year award from the Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank). The award was presented at the Bank's 38th Annual Conference in Washington, D.C.

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"This transaction is what Ex-Im Bank is all about – improving the lives of people around the world while supporting American jobs in the process," said Ex-Im Bank Chairman and President Fred P. Hochberg. "I am pleased that GE is receiving this award for exporting products that are helping to make clean drinking water available to the people of West Africa."  

"Ex-Im Bank is a valued partner and their financing enabled GE Power & Water to support this break-through project in Nigeria," said Heiner Markhoff, president and CEO—water and process technologies for GE Power & Water.

"This transaction is a tremendous milestone in our pursuit of boosting Nigeria's economy by increasing clean water access for more than 160 million people," said WATTCCON Managing Director and CEO Aliyu Maigari Mamman. "I would like to thank GE, Ex-Im Bank and Fidelity Bank for collaborating with WATTCCON on this world-class project."

Ex-Im Bank's loan guarantee provides $9.5 million in financing to the Water Treatment Technology and Chemical Company Limited (WATTCCON), a Nigeria-based company dedicated to providing clean water to more 300 million people in West Africa.

With Ex-Im Bank's financing, WATTCCON will purchase equipment from GE to help build Nigeria's biggest and most environmentally-friendly sodium hypochlorite plant in Kaduna, Nigeria. This industrial chlorine bleach plant will produce 40,000 liters of sodium hypochlorite per day. Nigeria needs an estimated 173,000 liters of chlorine disinfectant each day for potable drinking water alone. The plant will use a GE Cloromat technology system to manufacture high quality and high purity sodium hypochlorite.

This transaction will support approximately 50 jobs in Minnetonka, Minnesota and Trevose, Erie and Grove City, Pennsylvania. It will also create approximately 50 skilled- and semi-skilled direct jobs and 150 indirect jobs in Nigeria. 

Ex-Im Bank's 2013 Annual Conference will feature prominent members of the business and government community including Vice President Joe Biden, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, former National Security Advisor General James Jones, Xerox Corporation CEO Ursula Burns, and Citibank Chairman Michael O'Neill. A full listing of speakers, panelists, and moderators is available on Ex-Im's website: www.exim.gov

About Ex-Im Bank

Ex-Im Bank is an independent federal agency that helps create and maintain U.S. jobs by filling gaps in private export financing at no cost to American taxpayers. In the past five years (from Fiscal Year 2008), Ex-Im Bank has earned for U.S. taxpayers nearly $1.6 billion above the cost of operations. The Bank provides a variety of financing mechanisms, including working capital guarantees, export credit insurance and financing to help foreign buyers purchase U.S. goods and services.

Ex-Im Bank approved nearly $35.8 billion in total authorizations in FY 2012 – an all-time Ex-Im record. This total includes more than $6.1 billion directly supporting small-business export sales – also an Ex-Im record. Ex-Im Bank's total authorizations are supporting an estimated $50 billion in U.S. export sales and approximately 255,000 American jobs in communities across the country. For more information, visit www.exim.gov.