FIMBANK President attends Asia-Europe Business Forum
Fimbank plc, the Malta based trade Finance institution has been a key participant to the 11th edition of the Asia-Europe Business Forum (AEBF), just finished in Beijing and held from 21 to 23 October.
The AEBF is part of the official ASEM cooperation and has been created to strengthen the economic cooperation between the business sectors of Asia and Europe and to formulate business recommendations to be addressed to the governments of the Asian and European countries participating in the ASEM Summit held in Beijing October 24 and 25.
Every two years, the AEBF convenes in parallel with the Asia-Europe Meeting Summit and the first edition was organised in Paris in 1996.The Forum involves government officials and business representatives in a direct dialogue – chambers of commerce, business organisations, multinationals and SMEs from 45 ASEM members.
The 11th edition, organised by the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT) and supported directly by the Ambassador of Malta Karl Xuereb, was participated by 800 high level business leaders from ASEM countries and for the first time ever, an institution of Malta intervened and also chaired one of the five Working Groups: the president of Fimbank, Margrith Lutsch-Emmenegger, addressed the participants of the most attended working group, focused on SMEs development. Her intervention underlined the necessity to support SMEs with financial instruments like factoring and forfeiting who could represent the perfect solutions for those corporations who are suffering limited access to credit. Fimbank’s access to AEBF represented also the opportunity to offer to the Chinese government the possibility to assist for the introduction of factoring companies in China as a specific category of non-banking financial institutions.
Further than meetings with potential local clients and business partners, the President of Fimbank, Margrith Lutsch-Emmenegger had also private and restricted meetings with the Vice President of China, Shi Jin Ping and the Prime Minister of Vietnam, Nguyen Tan Dung.
