From the AFR today, Gina Rinhart’s son, John Hancock, argues:
“Export credit agency funding certainly is not welfare – my mother is paying interest and buying hundreds of millions of dollars of American equipment – and is undoubtedly a significant benefit to the US, or why would they do the deal? It’s one of the toughest routes to project financing and she should be well congratulated for achieving a win for Australia and the US.”
I agree that the “welfare” argument is not much more than bitching.
It is also kind of true that export credit agencies are a difficult route to project financing in-so-far as they only exist to serve projects that can’t get private capital.
But, one could also turn that around and say that they’re a much easier form of financing given they apply looser criteria than markets do.
