ITFC conducts first transaction with Bolero

In March 2021, ITFC announced that a cash against documents transaction it orchestrated was successfully completed between Burkina Faso-based cotton company Sofitex and Louis Dreyfus Company (LDC), with an electronic bill of lading (eBL) issued on Bolero’s digital trade finance platform used to speed up the document flow. The deal involved the shipment of Burkina Faso cotton from the Port of Lomé in Togo, to LDC in Asia, with global shipping and logistics firm CMA CGM issuing the eBL for the transaction. Founded in 2005, ITFC has a mandate to support trade finance among the 57 nations that comprise the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) members.

According to the ITFC document, cotton is one of the few cash crops grown in Burkina Faso and accounts for roughly 18% of its exports and 3% of its GDP. ITFC has signalled plans to ramp up trade finance digitisation, and told GTR that ‘it is now working with other member states to expedite the adoption of digital trade solutions with an aim to digitalise the whole trade flow end-to-end’. 

The Islamic Development Bank (IsDB) member has displayed signs it is looking to increasingly deploy blockchain-based trade finance solutions. In January 2021, Bangladeshi bank City Bank partnered with ITFC to execute its first ever cross-border shariah-compliant blockchain-based letter of credit (LC) transaction on Contour’s platform.