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Sustainable finance regulators should stop chasing trophy deals: ADB specialist

Wong Pei Ting

Wong Pei Ting

Published Wed, Aug 24, 2022 · 03:41 PM
    • “Often we forget about municipalities and provincial-level financing, because everyone talks about big corporates and sovereign finance, but we forget about the province and what they need in order to achieve their own targets in terms of NDCs,” said ADB's Mohd Sani Mohd Ismail. 
    • “Often we forget about municipalities and provincial-level financing, because everyone talks about big corporates and sovereign finance, but we forget about the province and what they need in order to achieve their own targets in terms of NDCs,” said ADB's Mohd Sani Mohd Ismail.  PHOTO: BLOOMBERG

    REGULATORS who are guiding the direction of sustainable finance must move beyond “first” and “biggest” prizes and give higher priority to the inclusion of marginalised groups, a panellist said on Wednesday (Aug 24) at Maybank’s Invest Asean 2022 conference.

    Chasing those trophies for visibility might not be the most productive way to harness finance for net-zero goals, said Mohd Sani Mohd Ismail, the principal financial sector specialist at the Asian Development Bank’s South-east Asia department.

    Urging stakeholders to think “holistically” about what is needed to drive the transition to greener and more sustainable economies, he advocated for looking more closely at what can be done to use the sustainable finance route to provide funding for groups that are unable to accessing capital markets. Help can come in the manner of the issuance of municipal bonds, for instance, he noted. 

    ESGSGXAsian Development Bank

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