The Export-Import Bank of the United States (EXIM) is seeking applications from the private space industry to invest $5 billion for financing space projects such as rockets and satellite products.
EXIM’s usual approach of investing during a capital crunch is again at play this time as the capital market for the space industry gets bleaker. The US export credit agency also bulked out financing during the 2010-2015 tighter capital phase, according to CNBC.
“In our pipeline related to this industry, about $1.3 billion are likely to come to fruition within a year and another $4 billion that we’re looking at are a little less further along,” Judith Pryor, EXIM’s first vice president and vice chair of the board of directors, said on Monday at the 2023 World Satellite Business Week conference.
“We don’t discriminate. We don’t pick winners or losers,” Pryor emphasized.
Pryor further added that EXIM is increasingly seeing applications from companies building low Earth orbit satellite networks, also known as LEO constellations, for services such as communications and imagery. The bank acts as an alternative lender to support U.S. companies and examines “each individual transaction on its own merits” rather than focus on specific areas of the space industry, as reported by CNBC.
