Amb. Claver Gatete, the Minister of Finance and Economic Planning has been named the new Chairperson of Board of Governors for the Preferential Trade Area Bank, commonly known as the PTA Bank, a multinational trade and development financial institution.

Gatete was announced the new board chair for the bank during the 32^nd PTA annual general meeting held in Kigali on Monday. He assumes his new responsibilities with immediate effect, replacing his Djibouti counterpart.

PTA Bank was established in 1985, with a focus on financing critical areas of priority on African continent, mainly agriculture and infrastructure, including energy, among others.

Although PTA Bank is an institution of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), its membership is open to Non-COMESA states, non-regional countries as well as institutional shareholders.

Gatete said that he looks to see "further development” of the regional bank.

 He commended PTA’s collaboration with Rwanda, in financing the latter’s development ambitions in the sectors of real estate, hospitality, transport, manufacturing and heavy industries, banking and financial services, among others.

"Rwanda has been granted more than US$160M in loans from PTA Bank in various sectors that contributed to our economic development…we are a happy member state of PTA Bank and an appreciative recipient of its trade and development financing,” Gatete said.

Available figures indicate that, PTA Bank has registered "excellent performance in last 5 years. It has 38 percent capital adequacy ratio and non-performing loans less than 3 per cent.