China's green bond market slowed in the first six months of last year as the authorities focused instead on Covid-19-related financial instruments but a second-half recovery saw the nation again positioned as the number one 'emerging market' economy in sustainable investment terms.
That was one of the findings of the latest edition of the Emerging Market Green Bond Report published by World Bank private-sector arm the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and French asset manager Amundi.
According to the third edition of the publication, published this month, China issued $18 billion of green bonds last year, most of them from July onwards, as East Asia and the Pacific regions dominated a $40 billion emerging market segment.
With China having posted more than $30 billion in green bonds in “previous years,” according to the IFC report, the fall was put down to the need to mobilize funding to drive an economic recovery from Covid-19 in the first half of the year.
The study is predicting emerging market green bond issuance worth $100 billion over the next three years, against a whole-world backdrop of $1 trillion of green bonds issued since 2007, thanks to $280 billion worth of issuances last year.
The IFC said Egypt, Kazakhstan and Saudi Arabia were among seven 'emerging nations' to issue their first green bonds during 2020, as 101 entities launched 174 bonds with a total value of $40 billion. Other large providers of the sustainable finance instruments included Chile, Brazil and Indonesia, the IFC said in a press release published to publicize the report.
The IFC has stated green investment opportunities worth more than $10 trillion could be on offer this decade, driving the creation of 200 million jobs.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.