TTP joined industry leaders at the EBRD 2026 annual meeting in Riga

We were delighted to conduct a series of video interviews yesterday morning at the Splendid Palace in Riga, as part of our media partnership with the EBRD Trade Facilitation Programme.

Chinara Alybaeva, Deputy Head of Correspondent Banking and Trade Finance, Kyrgyz Investment Credit Bank — joined by Arif Ali, CEO, KICB — on 25 years with the EBRD TFP, what it means to be a confirming bank, and the outlook for trade finance in Kyrgyzstan

Vincent OBRIEN, Executive Director, ICC UAE and member of the TTP Global Advisory Panel — on the difference between guarantees and standby letters of credit, and an overview of guarantees within the EBRD TFP

Vincent Chinhsiang Yao, Taiwan Representative to the United Kingdom — on Taiwan’s trade resilience, government support for competitiveness, and what Taiwan brings to EBRD regions including the Baltics and Central and Eastern Europe

Interviews were conducted by Deepesh Patel, Editor-in-Chief, Trade Treasury Payments (TTP).

Full vodcasts coming soon!

• EBRD’s Green TFP has supported 2,000+ individual transactions worth over €500m, but classifying trade finance as genuinely “green” remains far harder than in bonds or lending, where established principles already exist
• Dedicated ESG roles are being downgraded at major banks and corporates, the obligation framing is giving way to a commercial rationale, with energy security now doing a lot of the heavy lifting
• The ICC Principles on Sustainable Trade Finance (December 2025) give banks a framework, but the real debate is pricing: banks that reprice sustainable transactions are making a strategic choice to compress margins, and most aren’t there yet
• Supply chain finance was one of the first products to convert to sustainability-linked structures, but uptake has been slower than hoped, partly because banks aren’t getting capital relief
• Emerging markets are being asked to decarbonise while still meeting basic needs in education, healthcare, and energy access — the burden can’t be applied uniformly

• Legal reform is accelerating — 62.5% of global exports now come from MLETR-aligned countries, up from 34% two and a half years ago
• But standards, interoperability, and capacity building remain unsolved — especially for SMEs in emerging markets
• The next phase is about embedding trust in the data itself, not in platforms
• Europe’s regulatory push — eIDAS 2, EFTI, digital wallets — is creating a forcing function for banks and corporates alike
• The priority is to move from country-level legal reform to coordinated regional digital trade roadmaps