8world: Green Bonds

Commenting on the Monetary Authority of Singapore's announcement of sovereign green bonds, SMU Associate Professor of Finance and Co-Director of the Singapore Green Finance Centre, Liang Hao, noted that the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in 2020 found in a study that such bonds issued by countries tend to have a green premium. He added that however, if the targets of the project investment are in projects with relatively stable cash flow, this premium may not be observed. Assoc Prof Liang also pointed out that many investors do not have proper guidance when deciding to invest and added that at the same time, the current standards used by different countries and regions are also inconsistent, which brings a lot of confusion to investors. He concluded that many international institutions are also actively introducing more transparent and comparable environmental, social and governance rating standards, which could suppress the greenwashing problem to a large extent.