Agribank delegation attends meetings and works with international organizations, partners in the US on ESG and sustainable finance
From October 21-28, 2024, Agribank's delegation attended sessions organized jointly by the World Bank (WB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) within the framework of the 2024 Annual Meeting and worked with international credit rating organization Moody's Ratings and Wells Fargo Bank on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) topics and sustainable finance.
Latest
From October 21-28, 2024, Agribank's delegation, led by Ms. Nguyen Tuyet Duong - Member of the Board of Members, Ms. Phung Thi Binh - Deputy General Director of Agribank, and leaders of several units at the Head Office, attended sessions organized jointly by the World Bank (WB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) within the framework of the 2024 Annual Meeting and worked with international credit rating organization Moody's Ratings and Wells Fargo Bank on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) topics and sustainable finance.
Within the framework of the Annual Meeting organized by WB and IMF, the delegation attended the plenary session and the wrap-up session on the global economic situation, addressing global concerns such as world economic outlook, global financial stability, poverty reduction, addressing the middle-income trap, data banking, inclusive economic growth, aid effectiveness enhancement, job creation, climate change, and more.
Additionally, the Agribank delegation participated in several discussion sessions and seminars on international cooperation development, global financial systems, foreign exchange management, commercial bank governance and supervision, and global economic trends such as green finance and sustainable development. The session on debt-for-climate swaps was notable, examining the case study of Barbados, where emerging markets need trillions of USD annually for climate action, but resources remain scarce. The debt-for-climate swap is a Barbados initiative that transforms public-private cooperation, where organizations committing to implement climate change mitigation or adaptation solutions will receive debt reduction or cancellation. This promising model could scale up global climate finance transformation without increasing debt.
 |
| The delegation of Agribank attended the Annual Meeting 2024 held by WB and IMF in Washington DC, the USA. |
The delegation also attended a session on capacity development - Unlocking climate action through climate policy analysis: Transformative climate policies will create opportunities for climate investments at the scale and speed necessary to achieve countries' ambitious climate goals. The Climate Policy Assessment (CPD) of the Fiscal Affairs Department (FAD) has been deployed to help countries identify fiscal policy solutions for climate and provide information to support the development of strong reform measures within the framework of programs funded by the Resilience and Sustainability Trust (RST). CPD emphasizes short-term and medium-term policy priorities in climate change mitigation and adaptation, paving the way for countries' long-term climate resilience. The delegation also attended sessions on Agricultural-food systems as drivers of sustainable growth and job creation and Climate voices - Green jobs and future employment trends.
During the trip, the delegation met with Mr. Swami Venkataraman - Global Director of Sustainable Finance and senior experts from Moody's Ratings to discuss Moody's perspective on international policies and regulations on sustainable development and assess their impact on Vietnam in general and Agribank in particular. Mr. Swami Venkataraman emphasized the impact of ESG risks on an organization's credit rating in the current context, the criteria Moody uses to assess ESG risks, and shared experiences of regional and global banks on ESG risk management and focus on sustainable finance development. During the meeting, Mr. Swami Venkataraman appreciated Agribank's ESG risk impact on credit rating scores (CIS). With a CIS-2 score for Agribank, he assessed this as a high score compared to banks with similar credit ratings evaluated by Moody's.
 |
| The Agribank delegation works with the sustainable finance department at Moody's headquarters in New York, USA. |
Agribank also met with Mr. Schub Jeffrey - Director of Sustainable Development at Wells Fargo Bank (WF), to learn about ESG implementation experience at WF. Mr. Schub Jeffrey shared that WF has built a sustainable development framework and established a team of 23 personnel implementing ESG since 2021 to finance $500 billion for sustainable development by 2030. WF has appointed a Director of Sustainable Development to achieve this ambitious goal and established a specialized department to implement ESG globally. Mr. Schub Jeffrey emphasized that WF's success secret in the sustainable development transformation journey is balancing financial and sustainability goals, highlighting new business opportunities created through developing sustainable products and services and supporting their customers in achieving green and sustainable transformation goals.
WF also shared about the US Government's support in tax policy for businesses with good carbon reduction practices. WF looks forward to cooperating with Agribank in developing sustainable inter-bank products and services such as green trade finance, international green bond issuance, etc. To effectively implement ESG and sustainable development at Agribank in particular and Vietnamese banks in general, Mr. Schub Jeffrey recommended the important role of Leadership in issuing sustainable development frameworks to facilitate the deployment of sustainable products and services while focusing on building a system to monitor and evaluate implementation results in a timely and transparent manner.
Agribank is actively implementing actions and solutions to realize its strong commitment to ESG management practices. Agribank focuses on building internal policy systems, regulations, and organizational structures oriented toward sustainable development; researching and developing green products and services; prioritizing funding for projects with positive environmental and social impacts; actively implementing inclusive finance, especially for rural, mountainous, and island areas... The participation of Agribank's senior leadership delegation at the IMF/WB Annual Meeting event and meetings with senior leaders in charge of sustainable development from Moody's Ratings and Wells Fargo Bank demonstrates Agribank's leadership's strong message regarding the green transformation and sustainable development journey.
The World Bank is actively supporting Agribank in green transformation and sustainable development by developing a draft Green Finance Framework as a basis for Agribank's green bond issuance, determining criteria for evaluating green projects and providing feedback on Agribank's green bond issuance plan, reviewing the portfolio of potential projects using capital from green bonds.
