Expanding Post-Harvest Finance Through Warehouse Receipts and Related Instruments

Abstract

Warehouse receipt financing and similar types of collateralized lending provide an alternative to traditional lending requirements of banks and other financiers and could provide opportunities to expand this lending in emerging economies for agricultural trade. The main contents include: what is warehouse receipt financing; what is the value of warehouse receipt financing; other collateral lending mechanisms; tradable receipt financing -- the example of cedula de produto rural in Brazil; and the use of reverse factoring -- the example of nafin in Mexico. The paper concludes that through innovative approaches in different emerging markets both warehouse receipts and innovative collateralized lending mechanisms could provide opportunities to expand the levels of post-harvest financing being provided to producers, traders, processors, and other agribusinesses.