OECD Export Credits Secretariat
The OECD Export Credits Secretariat is the administrative home that supports Participants to the Arrangement on Officially Supported Export Credits and related official export credit work at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. The Arrangement is a Gentlemen's Agreement amongst its Participants. It is not an OECD Act as defined in Article 5 of the Convention on the OECD. Discussions relating to the Arrangement take place under the auspices of the Participants, who receive administrative support of the OECD Secretariat.
Participants listed in the Arrangement background materials are Australia, Canada, the European Union, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland, Turkiye, the United Kingdom and the United States. Contact for the export credits work is published as export-credits@oecd.org. For bank desks, the Secretariat is the institutional address of Arrangement texts, notifications practice and related official support disciplines that national export credit agency programmes implement. A desk-facing walkthrough of the Arrangement's articles sits in the OECD Arrangement desk primer; a standing reference hub is at OECD Arrangement.
Arrangement purpose hosted by the OECD Export Credits Secretariat
The main purpose of the OECD Arrangement is to provide a framework for the orderly use of officially supported export credits by fostering a level playing field so exporters compete on quality and price of goods and services rather than on the most favourable official financing terms. To that end, the Arrangement places limitations on financing terms and conditions, including repayment terms, minimum premium rates and minimum interest rates, and on the use of tied aid. Transparency provisions among Participants support effective application of those limits.
The Arrangement applies to officially supported export credits with a repayment term of two years or more. It does not apply to military equipment or agricultural commodities. Official support may take the form of export credit guarantee or insurance (pure cover), official financing support through direct credit, refinancing or interest-rate support, or a combination. Those forms map to bank-facing buyer credit guarantees, direct loans and ECA premium pricing in national programmes.
Sector Understandings and related OECD export credit bodies
Sector-specific rules appear in four Sector Understanding annexes: Climate Change (Annex I), Nuclear Power Plants (Annex II), Civil Aircraft (Annex III) and Ships (Annex IV). Participants to the Civil Aircraft Sector Understanding differ from those of the general Arrangement, including a non-OECD Participant; the other Sector Understandings largely follow the general Participant set. The current text is the January 2026 consolidated version (TAD/PG(2026)1), which replaced the September 2024 version.
Commercial Interest Reference Rates (CIRR) and risk-based minimum premium systems linked to OECD country risk classification and buyer-risk categories are core Arrangement mechanics that desks use when checking whether an ECA offer is inside Participant disciplines. Matching and notification procedures police deviations through transparency rather than through a court.
Related official export credit work also sits with the OECD Working Party on Export Credits and Credit Guarantees, which OECD anti-bribery instruments identify as the forum ensuring implementation of OECD anti-bribery measures for international business transactions that benefit from official export credit support. That Working Party track is adjacent to Arrangement financial terms but addresses integrity controls on official support.
Desk use and institutional boundaries
Banks and ECA teams use Secretariat-supported Arrangement texts as the rulebook for medium- and long-term official support among Participants. National product pages for UKEF, US EXIM and peers implement ceilings such as the 15 percent minimum down payment and 85 percent maximum official support on export contract value. Because the Arrangement is a Gentlemen's Agreement, compliance is political and reciprocal rather than litigated as a treaty obligation.
The OECD Export Credits Secretariat is not itself a lender, insurer or guarantor. It does not issue policies to exporters or banks. It is not the Berne Union, which is an industry association of insurers and ECAs, and it is not the Paris Club, which coordinates sovereign bilateral debt treatments. Non-Participant official finance sits outside Arrangement mutual discipline and is assessed under separate mandate and subsidy analysis.
Boundaries
For credit files, the operative constraints are the Arrangement articles and annexes as implemented by the national ECA, not a Secretariat credit decision. Soft-law status does not make the ceilings optional for Participant agencies. Project finance transactions are defined by a footnote to Article 21 (minimum premium rates for credit risk), also referenced in Article 24 (buyer risk classification), rather than a standalone annex, and repayment terms and structure for those transactions fall under Article 12 (maximum repayment term) and Article 13 (repayment of principal and payment of interest) of the general text. Sector Understanding eligibility likewise remains document-specific. Desk analysis therefore separates Arrangement conformity from commercial credit appetite on uncovered residual risk.