Strengthening Green Financing and Mainstreaming Gender – GIFS & GroW Annual Theme Discussion

by Priya Jadhav 

Mumbai,26th January 2024: The ‘Green Indian Financial System (GIFS)’ Initiative, founded by SIDBI, Shakti Sustainable Energy Foundation (SSEF) and French Development Agency (AFD), organised an event with the annual theme discussion titled “Strengthening Green Financing and Mainstreaming Gender” on January 23, 2024, in Mumbai. This event successfully brought together MSMEs and stakeholders, to reflect on the recent developments on green finance, and to discuss how the financial system and the MSMEs can find a common ground to ensure a resilient and low-carbon transition in India.  

Established in 2021, GIFS initiative been instrumental in shaping discussions around greening the financial ecosystem and facilitating its implementation through Indian institutions. The objective of the event was to share updates on the newly created regulations, schemes, tools, working groups etc. from 2022 and 2023 activities that have contributed to the greening of the Indian financial system. Additionally, to highlight GIFS achievements, capitalization and introducing the upcoming “Greening the Finance-to-Finance Green” (G2FG) Technical Assistance platform for MSMEs and financial institutions.

The event also focused on Greening of Finance by Women (GroW); a distinguished professional network dedicated to women in climate finance. The event served as a platform to present key updates, enable collaboration, and empower women in green and climate finance through GRoW, a part of GIFS initiative. Mr. Prakash Kumar, DMD, SIDBI, welcomed participants with an opening remark, providing a comprehensive introduction to the GIFS Initiative and Ms. Kruthika Jerome of Shakti Sustainable Energy Foundation introduced the GRoW summit. Subsequently, women entrepreneurs shared their experiences in credit access for green investment, with addresses from Ms. Sahar Mansoor of Bare Necessities, Ms. Kalyani Shinde of Godaam Innovations, Ms. Chaitsi Ahuja, Founder of Brown Living and Ms. Vanita Prasad of REVY Environmental Solutions.

The Policy Perspective on Climate Financing Landscape India: developments in the banking sector and regulation session featured notable speakers Mr. Sivasubramanian Ramann, IA&AS, CMD, SIDBI; Mr. Sunil Nair, CGM, RBI; Mr. V Chandrasekar, Senior Advisor, IBA; and Mr. P Shyam Sunder, Joint Director, BEE, Ministry of Power. 

The event saw other eminent speakers who spoke on various topics.  Mr. Nitin Desai, Member of Board, Shakti Sustainable Energy Foundation (SSEF); Mr. Sivasubramanian Ramann, CMD, SIDBI; Ms. Audrey Brulé - Françoise, Deputy Head Financial Systems Division, AFD, briefed the participants about GIFS’ achievements. 

Mr. Sivasubramanian Ramann, CMD, SIDBI stated that digitization and greening are top priorities of SIDBI. In this endeavor, building synergy, networks, platforms, financing, and development models aligned to national net zero mandate has been our strategic approach. GIFS and GroW platform brings on board global good practitioners, policy insight institutions and SIDBI having pulse of enterprise ecosystem. Building capacity both on demand and supply side has been our credit plus approach throughout. This thought leadership platform makes it credit plus and furthers our resolve for greening enterprise ecosystem differently.

Mr. Sunil Nair, CGM, RBI, while giving the special address mentioned about the financing framework that every bank and financing institutes follow while lending the loans to the borrowers. He also briefed on need of transition finance for borrower and ease and issues while scrutinizing financing requirements of the borrowers of the specific region or country.