Türkiye’s state-owned VakıfBank has secured €200 million in 10-year financing from ING Germany, guaranteed by Italy’s export credit agency SACE, bringing the new funding it has raised from abroad this year to $9 billion, the bank said in a report published on Oct. 14.
SACE guarantees 95% of the loan, which will be used to meet the financing needs of customers trading with Italy and to support trade between the two countries, according to the Dünya newspaper.
Long-term money for importers
Export credit agencies such as SACE back loans that help buyers abroad purchase goods from their home country’s companies. Ciro Aquino, SACE’s regional director for Africa, Türkiye and the Middle East, said the deal supports more than 100 Italian companies, mostly small and medium-sized enterprises, while making it easier for Turkish importers to access medium- and long-term finance.
Tiziano Tallarida, director of structured finance at ING Germany, said the transaction builds on the first SACE-backed financing that ING and VakıfBank completed in 2023.
Ten-year funding is rare and valuable in Türkiye’s banking system, where most deposits are short-term and lira loan rates are high, with the central bank’s policy rate at 37%. Export credit agency-backed loans allow banks to offer longer maturities and lower costs to corporate clients.
$9 billion raised abroad this year
VakıfBank General Manager Osman Arslan said the bank had already obtained about $2 billion of new funding in 2026 from Austria’s export credit agency OeKB and from the World Bank Group’s IBRD and MIGA.
With the ING deal, Arslan said, the total new funding the bank has secured from abroad in 2026 has reached $9 billion.
He said the bank’s international funding strategy was guided by what it calls a development-focused value banking vision.
Turkish banks tap foreign lenders
Turkish lenders have been active borrowers in international markets as foreign investor appetite for Türkiye’s assets has recovered since the country returned to more conventional economic policies in 2023. Syndicated loans, eurobonds and development finance give banks foreign-currency liquidity to lend to exporters and other companies.
VakıfBank is one of Türkiye’s three large state-owned banks, alongside Ziraat Bankası and Halkbank, and one of the country’s biggest lenders by assets.
The World Bank Group said on Oct. 13 that it had mobilized more than $21 billion of private capital for Türkiye since 2022.
Sources
- VakıfBank’ın sağladığı dış kaynak 9 milyar dolara ulaştı (Dünya)
- Dünya Bankası: Türkiye için 21 milyar dolar harekete geçirildi (Bigpara/Hürriyet)
Photo: Hello40339 / CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
