The World Bank’s private-sector arm has introduced new climate change conditions for its investments in commercial banks to encourage the lenders to wind down support for coal projects in Africa and Asia.
The International Finance Corp (IFC), which owns equity stakes in many large commercial banks in emerging markets, hopes the restrictions would trigger other investors to exit the coal sector.
“I think this is an important milestone. If we look historically, our environmental policies and procedures have been adopted by both other development finance institutions and the market in general,” said Peter Cashion, head of climate finance in the IFC’s Financial Institutions Group.
Under the new rules, in effect since July last year, but published on Thursday last week, the IFC would no longer make equity investments in financial institutions that do not have a plan to phase out support for coal.
It would also use various conditions attached to its existing and new equity investments to ensure that the banks involved reduce their exposure to coal to zero by 2030.
The IFC exerts considerable influence over commercial banks in emerging markets, which often turn to the Washington-based lender for both access to capital and the kind of governance expertise that helps them build credibility among investors. Apart from the IFC being a major investor in its own right, its standards are widely adopted by the private sector.
Climate change campaigners welcomed the move, saying it sent a clear message to the commercial banking and insurance sectors that public finances would no longer be made available for institutions backing coal projects.
“We expect an avalanche of different institutions to adopt a similar approach, it will have a huge impact,” said Nezir Sinani, codirector of Recourse, a Netherlands-based nonprofit organization that has been lobbying the IFC.
NO BREAKTHROUGH? More substantial ‘deliverables,’ such as tariff reductions, would likely be saved for a meeting between Trump and Xi later this year, a trade expert said China launched two probes targeting the US semiconductor sector on Saturday ahead of talks between the two nations in Spain this week on trade, national security and the ownership of social media platform TikTok. China’s Ministry of Commerce announced an anti-dumping investigation into certain analog integrated circuits (ICs) imported from the US. The investigation is to target some commodity interface ICs and gate driver ICs, which are commonly made by US companies such as Texas Instruments Inc and ON Semiconductor Corp. The ministry also announced an anti-discrimination probe into US measures against China’s chip sector. US measures such as export curbs and tariffs
The US on Friday penalized two Chinese firms that acquired US chipmaking equipment for China’s top chipmaker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯國際), including them among 32 entities that were added to the US Department of Commerce’s restricted trade list, a US government posting showed. Twenty-three of the 32 are in China. GMC Semiconductor Technology (Wuxi) Co (吉姆西半導體科技) and Jicun Semiconductor Technology (Shanghai) Co (吉存半導體科技) were placed on the list, formally known as the Entity List, for acquiring equipment for SMIC Northern Integrated Circuit Manufacturing (Beijing) Corp (中芯北方積體電路) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International (Beijing) Corp (中芯北京), the US Federal Register posting said. The
India’s ban of online money-based games could drive addicts to unregulated apps and offshore platforms that pose new financial and social risks, fantasy-sports gaming experts say. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government banned real-money online games late last month, citing financial losses and addiction, leading to a shutdown of many apps offering paid fantasy cricket, rummy and poker games. “Many will move to offshore platforms, because of the addictive nature — they will find alternate means to get that dopamine hit,” said Viren Hemrajani, a Mumbai-based fantasy cricket analyst. “It [also] leads to fraud and scams, because everything is now
MORTGAGE WORRIES: About 34% of respondents to a survey said they would approach multiple lenders to pay for a home, while 29.2% said they would ask family for help New housing projects in Taiwan’s six special municipalities, as well as Hsinchu city and county, are projected to total NT$710.65 billion (US$23.61 billion) in the upcoming fall sales season, a record 30 percent decrease from a year earlier, as tighter mortgage rules prompt developers to pull back, property listing platform 591.com (591新建案) said yesterday. The number of projects has also fallen to 312, a more than 20 percent decrease year-on-year, underscoring weakening sentiment and momentum amid lingering policy and financing headwinds. New Taipei City and Taoyuan bucked the downturn in project value, while Taipei, Hsinchu city and county, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung
RSS