US President Obama is expected to sign a bill today that will revive the country’s Export-Import Bank after being overwhelmingly approved by the Senate. The move comes more than five months after the bank was forced to shut its doors amid political pressure over its support for ‘big business’.
US President Obama is expected to sign a bill today that will revive the country’s Export-Import Bank after being overwhelmingly approved by the Senate.
Senators voted 83 to 16 to approve a US$305bn highway bill that would renew the export credit agency’s charter through 30 September 2019, soon after the House of Representatives cleared it by a margin of 359 to 65.
The move comes more than five months after the bank was forced to shut its doors amid political pressure over its support for ‘big business’, forcing the country’s satellite manufacturing and launch services sectors to scramble for alternative financing solutions.
Ex-Im will be back in the game if President Obama signs off the bill, although it will have a lower lending limit among other reforms.
Large US-based commercial space players Boeing (NYSE:BA], Lockheed Martin (NYSE:LMT) and Orbital ATK (NYSE:OA) have all pointed to the negative impact that Ex-Im’s closure has had on their ability to compete for contracts.
Boeing effectively lost a satellite manufacturing contract it had with Hong Kong’s ABS after the ECA’s charter expired on 30 June.
The two had been looking for alternative financing options, and Boeing’s position will have been boosted now that Ex-Im is back in the picture. However, it is understood that the operator’s requirements for ABS-8 have changed in the meantime and it has recently invited US-based Space Systems Loral (SSL) to bid.
Christian Patouraux, CEO of Pacific-focused broadband startup Kacific, told SatelliteFinance in October that it was open to ordering a Ka-band satellite from Boeing if Ex-Im was revived, although he suggested at the time that it would need to happen in a “matter of weeks”.
Commenting on congressional approval to reauthorise Ex-Im, Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg said: “By reopening the Export-Import Bank, Congress has taken strong action enabling American exporters and the skilled workers they employ to compete successfully in tough global markets. We commend the bipartisan majorities in both the House and the Senate that recognised the Ex-Im Bank’s value to the US economy by voting several times in recent months to reauthorise.
“With these votes, Congress did the right thing for workers at companies large and small across the nation, including the 1.5 million workers at nearly 15,000 U.S. companies that help Boeing design, make and support America’s aerospace exports.”
While the full impact of Ex-Im’s absence this year remains to be seen, its international ECA counterparts have remained active. Bangladesh picked France and Italy-based Thales Alenia Space last month to build its first satellite, which is likely to be backed by French export credit agency Coface and launched by Europe’s Arianespace.
A month before that Azerbaijan’s Azercosmos said SSL will be building its Azerspace-2 satellite. It is in talks with commercial banks to secure the support of Canada’s ECA, which is open to SSL because the manufacturer’s owner is based in British Columbia.
