The production run is financed by the exporter, and the bank often says no.
Materials are bought before the buyer pays. That gap is the oldest problem in trade, it has a measured size, and the companies least able to carry it are the ones most likely to be refused.
An order arrives with sixty day terms. Production takes six weeks. Shipping takes four.
The exporter is out of pocket from the day the materials are ordered until roughly four months later, and during that stretch the money is gone while the invoice does not yet exist.
Nothing about that is unusual. It is the normal shape of an export order, and it is why trade finance exists.
The measured size of the gap
The Asian Development Bank surveys banks and companies and publishes the shortfall between demand for trade finance and what gets supplied.
In its 2025 survey that shortfall was $2.5tn, against $1.5tn in 2015. It puts the gap at roughly 10% of global merchandise trade.
The rejection rates sit close together and that is the surprise: 41% of applications from small and medium companies were rejected, against 40% from corporates.
The number that is easy to miss
Rejection is visible. What follows it is not.
The same work found 17% of small firms surveyed in Kenya and Tanzania had a genuine need for trade finance and never applied. They were not refused. They had already concluded there was no point.
A rejection rate counts the people who tried. It cannot count the orders that were never accepted because the exporter knew they could not fund the run.
What actually gets financed
Banks lend against things they can hold or sell, and an unfinished production run is neither.
Once there is a confirmed order and a document trail, the position improves, because the paperwork becomes collateral. That is the practical reason the documents at Stage 6 matter beyond getting paid: they are also what makes the run fundable in the first place.
The uncomfortable version is that the exporters with the weakest paperwork are the ones who most need the money, and that is the mechanism behind the gap rather than any individual bank's decision.
What I could not establish
I wanted a dated, public series for how long a small exporter waits on a trade finance decision.
There is not one. Banks describe it as case by case, which is true and unusable, and the full version of this stage will carry the timing only if I can assemble it from enough first-hand cases.
What I got wrong
I assumed small companies were rejected far more often than large ones.
The survey does not support that. The rejection rates sit two points apart, 41% against 40%, and the real asymmetry is elsewhere: a corporate refused by one bank walks to the next one, while a small exporter refused once often stops asking altogether.
Take your last export order and mark two dates: the day you first spent money on it, and the day the payment cleared.
The number of days between them is the amount of working capital that order tied up. Multiply by how many such orders you run at once, and you have the figure to take to a lender, in place of a general request for a facility.
Asian Development Bank, Global Trade Finance Gap Survey 2025 — $2.5tn gap, $1.5tn in 2015, about 10% of merchandise trade, 41% and 40% rejection rates, 17% self-rationing.
Read alongside Stage 1, where the payment terms that create this gap are agreed.