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BSP releases sustainable finance roadmap, guiding principles

Published Feb 9, 2022 04:59 pm

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) has released the sustainable finance roadmap and guiding principles on Wednesday, which were developed by the inter-agency technical working group on sustainable finance or the “Green Force”.

“All banks are encouraged to explore and consider where applicable, the strategies, priorities, and principles outlined in the roadmap and guiding principles in developing their approach or actions towards adopting sustainable finance,” said BSP Governor Benjamin E. Diokno in a circular letter he signed on Tuesday, Feb. 8, and released on the BSP website on Wednesday, Feb. 9.

BSP Governor Benjamin E. Diokno

The BSP first issued the Sustainable Finance Framework on April 29, 2020.

What the BSP released this week was the roadmap’s Annex A which is a comprehensive approach for the mainstreaming of sustainable finance in the Philippines, said Diokno.

The guiding principles or Annex B, meantime, contains the common understanding among banks and non-banks of the economic activities considered as sustainable.

Diokno said last month that they are considering several regulatory perks to banks that will shift to sustainable financing such as preferential rediscount rates or provision of higher loan values. These perks should increase the share of green financing in banks’ loan portfolios.

The BSP’s exploration of incentives to mobilize capital is part of the third phase of tits Sustainable Finance Framework. The first phase was issued in 2020 and the second phase was released in October last year which was the Environmental and Social Risk Management Framework.

Diokno said the country’s financial system in 2022 needs to have a better response to the climate crisis after the Philippines committed to reduce its carbon emissions by 75 percent by 2030 under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The BSP, with the Department of Finance, co-chairs the Green Force which is responsible for the roadmap “to bridge policy and regulatory gaps in promoting sustainable investments.”

In the last four years or since 2017, seven banks have issued $1.15 billion in foreign currency denominated and P85.4 billion in local currency denominated green, social and sustainability bonds.

Amid the pandemic, two local banks have issued social bonds worth approximately P29 billion to finance the needs of eligible micro, small and medium enterprises.

At the regional level, the sustainable bond markets in ASEAN+3 continued to expand to $389 billion as of September 2021. Some $278.5 billion worth of green bonds dominate the ASEAN+3 sustainable bond market while social and sustainability bonds amounted to $110.2 billion

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