PWC together with the Bankers Association to hold webinar on building resilience through Green Finance
Green finance is gaining popularity and is regarded as a way of meeting the needs of environmentalism and capitalism simultaneously. At its simplest, green finance is any structured financial activity created to ensure a better environmental outcome that encourages the development of green projects that minimize climate impact, which can be brought to fruition through the right combination of planning consent, strategic priorities and availability of capital.
While Sri Lanka grapples with the confluence of the pressing health threats posed by the Covid-19 and it’s evolving challenges, enhancing sustainable financing strategies and investments and transforming the financial system at regional and country levels is critical to direct the much-needed capital for sustainable development.
Providing an insight and understanding of the rapidly evolving landscape of green finance PWC Sri Lanka in collaboration with the Bankers Association will be organizing a webinar on the 9th December on this subject.
With banks and financial institutions requiring to play a pivotal role in creating a sustainable financial system, the webinar will cover topics around sustainable and responsible finance, why they matter and the need for Financial Institutions to contribute to sustainable development and social impact, in their lending or investing activities, by the way they function and treat their employees, clients, their communities, and suppliers. It will explain the steps taken to implement Social and Environmental management frameworks, how to integrate the framework, and why it is important to make it an institution-wide effort, including staff training and client education.
The session will also focus on the role the private sector should play in cooperating with government to identify green bonds to raise cash for new or existing projects such as energy, water management, building construction, water, land use and transport and can be aimed at energy efficiency, pollution prevention, sustainable agriculture, fishery and forestry, the protection of aquatic ecosystems, clean transportation and sustainable water management.
The panel of experienced subject matter experts addressing the webinar includes Sandeep Bhattacharya, who counts over 15 years of experience related to Bond Markets in India and SE Asia, and has held management roles varying from credit evaluation, business development and execution and structuring of transactions. He will educate the audiences on the Sustainable Bond and finance markets, the role of Climate Bonds Initiative, what are the factors which help the sustainable finance market grow, how multilaterals like ADB and IFC and government actions help and the green certification process.
Sandeep Mohanty – Director PwC – India holding over 12 years of professional experience with PwC with expertise in value creation through sustainability that include advising companies on integrating ESG into corporate strategy to drive business outcomes, low carbon economy and clean energy solutions, will set the conversations around an Issuer’s perspective; from “what’s the process to undergo, the process itself and compliance procedure.
Ms.Yvette Fernando, Deputy Governor of Central Bank, will give the audience an insight into the role and undertaking of various green banking initiatives, whilst Ama Wickramarachchi of Bank of Ceylon who represents the Sri Lanka Banks Association -Sustainable Banking Initiative, will delve further into this topic.
Ruvini Fernando, Director Deals Strategy, PwC Sri Lanka stated “Green Finance will impact every business as lines of credit become attached to carbon emission targets and ESG becomes more important than ever. A well-functioning financial system with a clear focus on sustainability is capable of channeling much needed funding towards green projects and technologies. Yet the lack of clarity about which activities can be defined as green remains an impediment to green finance development. Through webinars such as this, we hope to facilitate in bringing together regulators, policymakers, trade associations and development institutions, to discuss the way forward to ensure that we not only turn sustainable finance policies into action, but also strengthen measurement to capture market impact.”
