For the past couple of years the banks, along with international bodies and fast-food chains, have become the main target for antiglobalisation and anti-capitalist protests. I leave others to muse on the motivation and justification for such actions, but I do note that bank finance for developing countries, and more particularly the question of debt forgiveness, are prominent items on the protest agenda. I also note that this is a subject which has for several years been keenly debated, more soberly, by governments, international organisations such as the IMF and World Bank, and banks themselves. It is a complex issue. One must never lose sight of the fact that bank lending involves a contract between the bank and the borrower, and the parties should be expected to honour that contract. If it is treated otherwise, then the basis for all future relationships crumbles. But in practice the situation is hugely complicated if there is a syndicate of lenders, giving rise to problems of co-ordination and potential free riding, or if the World Bank or IMF are involved, which typically expect to be at the front of the queue for repayments. At the end of the day, commercial banks may decide that a degree of debt forgiveness (possibly disguised as a generous rescheduling) is advisable as the best means of minimising overall losses and, perhaps, preserving longer-term business opportunities with the country or customer in question. But this should be a commercial decision.

Second, innovative financing solutions. To meet Asia’s green financing needs, it is not enough to rely on just the public sector or the banking sector. We need innovative platforms to catalyse capital flows to marginally bankable but worthy green projects. In Singapore, one of our sovereign wealth funds, Temasek, has partnered HSBC to set up a debt financing platform to invest in marginally bankable sustainable infrastructure projects in Asia. We need new instruments such as blended finance to draw in different types of financers. Government agencies and multilateral development banks can potentially help to derisk sustainability projects by taking on first loss equity or providing a guarantee, to help crowd-in more private sector financing. This includes not just commercial banks but also capital providers such as foundations and family offices. We need to deploy technical assistance alongside financing. This is to support a range of activities such as project preparation, project implementation, and even training and capacity building to achieve maximum development impact. Third, financial supervision. Regulators are in a strong position to steward the financial system towards net zero through supervising financial institutions’ management of climate related risks. The Network for Greening the Financial System, or NGFS, plays a key role in helping to mainstream climate-related risk management. The NGFS has just issued a report highlighting the different paths that supervisors can take towards a set of internationally aligned supervisory practices. We strongly support the NGFS Declaration1 to green the financial system. The MAS is progressively embedding climate risk considerations in its supervisory framework.