As part of efforts by the Brazilian government to attract investments in the environmental sector, the country has announced that it plans to issue its first-ever green bond.
Luis Felipe Vital, head of public debt operations at the Brazil National Treasury at an event on Thursday bemoaned how it took Brazil a little longer than it took its peers but was optimistic the country will have very interesting things to announce in the future.
The Treasury had in 2021 under the government of then-President Jair Bolsonaro, said it would build a framework for issuing an ESG sovereign bond but the project failed to move forward, thereby subjecting Bolsonaro’s environmental policy to global criticism.
Brazil’s environmental agenda is expected to be given a boost by the new President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva as he seeks to embrace the transition to a green economy as a focus of a state-driven development policy.
Before his inauguration on January 1, Lula promised an ambitious environmental overhaul, including plans to grant new protected status to half a million square km (193,000 sq miles) of Amazon rainforest, fight deforestation, subsidize sustainable farming and reform Brazil’s tax code to bolster the shift to a greener economy.
“Brazil does give a lot of importance to the environmental components. So, we are looking forward to being back in the market in a bond related to that,” Vital said at the event organised by think tank OMFIF.
Story was adapted from Reuters.
