Shri A.V. Muralidharan, Chairman and Managing Director, Export Credit Guarantee Corporation of India Limited (ECGC), presented a dividend cheque of Rs.100 crore to Shri Kamal Nath, Union Minister of Commerce & Industry here today. ECGC has already paid an interim dividend of Rs.25 crore earlier, thus totaling an amount of Rs.125 crore for the financial year 2006-07. This is the highest ever dividend paid by ECGC, since its inception in 1957.
ECGC is currently in its 50th year of operations and is the only insurance company in India operating exclusively in the export credit insurance sector under ‘non-life’ category. One of the initiatives in the golden jubilee year is for setting up of an institute of international standard for credit insurance and credit risk management. ECGC is getting excellent support from international credit risk insurers and the Berne union, the international association of export credit risks insurers for this project.
ECGC has earned a gross premium income of Rs.617.66 crore during 2006-07 as compared to Rs.578.44 crore of previous year registering a growth of over 6 percent. ECGC achieved recoveries of Rs.210.20 crores crossing the Rs.200 crore mark for the first time. The net profit after tax for the year was Rs.369.70 crore as against the previous year’s profit of Rs.221.76 crore. ECGC has covered exports aggregating Rs.51733.77 crore and has covered export finance aggregating Rs.377107.03 crore.
ECGC’s new initiatives include insurance cover for exports made against Cargo Forward Receipts. A specific cover to suit the requirements of financial Institutions/ Factors was also designed and introduced during the year. The Corporation has on the anvil, proposal to introduce new products to cover Bio- technology and IT sectors. The designing of a cover to protect the exporters of Commodities against the risks of rejection is on the top of the agenda. The Corporation hopes to introduce these products in the current financial year with due approvals.
Another significant development in the matter of Government’s support to facilitate exports, especially the medium and long-term exports is in approving the National Export Insurance Account (NEIA), which has been made fully operational. The NEIA has been provided with funds by the Government of India and operated by a public trust, set up jointly by the Department of Commerce and ECGC. An amount of Rs.66 crore was released in the financial year 2005 – 2006; Rs.180 crores in 2006-07; and Rs.150 crore is expected to be added to the corpus of NEIA during 2007-08.
*************
RJ/NR/MRS
(Release ID :30216)