Govt could do more to finance green initiative: Kidwai

The government can do more in the area of financing green initiatives as around 70 per cent of the banks are publicly owned, HSBC Bank Country Head Naina Lal Kidwai said today.
"Financing is an area where the government could be more proactive as 70 per cent of the banking industry is owned by the government. These are national public sector banks and implementation (of green initiative) will really be quite easy to have it at the local banking level," Kidwai said.
She was participating in a panel discussion on 'Changing Paradigms of Creating Social Value for Businesses' in a event organised by The Energy and Research Institute (TERI).

She said sustainability has to be in the DNA of every organisation and CSR activities would play a major role in the area of climate change.
"It has to be top down and bottom up. And today there is a very important notification that the government is dealing with, which is that companies will have to disclose their spend in the CSR (corporate social responsibility). And that is defined at 2 per cent of the profit...So it's a large amount of money."
Kidwai said financing in sustainability is very important in the green space and these can be financed by newly created instruments called green bonds.

"It's a very new exciting development which is green bonds. Research studies suggest that the market of green bonds by 2020 will be USD 25 billion and is already aspiring to become USD 10 billion in next couple of years," she added.