Germany supports Vietnam in green credit development

The State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) and the Deutsche Gesellschaftfuer Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH co-hosted a seminar titled ‘Access to International Green Funds – Opportunities for Vietnam’ in Hanoi on June 18^th. 

The seminar is part of the German-Vietnamese Macroeconomic Reforms/Green Growth Programme, implemented by GIZ Vietnam on behalf of the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).

Chaired by SBV Deputy Governor Nguyen Thi Hong, the seminar is an opportunity for experts from the SBV, ministries, agencies, credit institutions and other related international organizations to share experiences and discuss on how to access to international green funds, especially the Green Climate Fund with its global scale, and to develop and implement green credit programs under real conditions of development of Vietnam.

The seminar. Photo: vov.vn

The seminar has the participation of many important credit institutions, foreign banks, related ministries and SBV departments, as well as donors and international organisations, who interested in supporting and funding for environmental purpose, green growth and sustainable development.

This is a concrete and practical step to facilitate SBV and credit institutions to initially pilot and develop credit programs in order to successfully implement the Government’s Green Growth Strategy, hence contribute to economic restructuring towards sustainable development.

In the opening speech, SBV Deputy Governor Nguyen Thi Hong emphasized that the banking system plays a decisive role as "the main channel for providing green funds, having the role to promote and orient green investments and credit risk management towards green growth".

In particular, "the two most important issues are funding and development of credit programs with appropriate targets in line with green criteria and standards". Besides, a number of factors also plays an essential role to encourage green investments, such as policy coordination (credit policy, fiscal policy); coordination of sources (domestic, international, green bank credit, capital market, etc.); coordination of financial instruments, technical advice, trainings and capacity building; using funds from international sources and from the state as leverage and encourage the participation of commercial credit and private funds, etc.

Ms. Carola Menzel, Senior Advisor and Project Manager from Frankfurt School – UNEP Collaborating Centre for Climate & Sustainable Energy Finance, shares international experiences and lessons learned on green credit policies, international green credit facilities and Green Climate Fund in the seminar.

Besides, Mr. Anders Nordheim from UNEP Finance Initiative introduces a range of initiatives and current programs of UNEP FI and sustainable banking.

In order to implement the National Strategy for Green Growth and the National Action Plan on Green Growth for period 2014 - 2020, the SBV Governor issued Directive No.03/CT-NHNN dated March 24^th, 2015 to promote green credit and social & environmental risk management in the credit activities.

On June 2^nd, 2015, the SBV and GIZ together with other international organizations organized a conference on implementation of Directive 03 for the entire banking sector.

The seminar is the next step in a series of SBV's efforts to support the economic transformation towards green and environmental and social sustainability.

Through the German-Vietnamese Macroeconomic Reforms/Green Growth Program, GIZ Vietnam has directly connected the activities in the priority areas to ‘Green Growth Strategy’ of Vietnam to achieve long term impacts across all sectors and facilitate Vietnam towards a sustainable future.

Green growth, green finance, green banking and credit is an extremely new field for many countries around the world, not only for Vietnam.

Therefore, this kind of seminar is essential to collect ideas, initiatives and practical experience from Vietnamese credit institutions and international organizations in this field.

Since then, the parties involved may pilot, draw lessons learned and replicate initiatives on national level.