JUST a year after its launch, the Green Bond Transparency Platform (GBTP) has become the key reporting tool for issuers in the Latin America and the Caribbean green bond market, covering 73 per cent of the region’s market, or a total of $26.8 billion. The platform also won the “Initiative of the Year – Green Bond 2022” award by Environmental-Finance.com, an online news and analysis service focused on sustainable finance.

According to a release, the GBTP, launched in April 2021, is an innovative solution developed by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and IDB Invest that promotes the harmonisation and standardisation of green bond reporting to increase investors’ confidence in the green bond market and facilitate green investments in the region. It uses first-hand data, uploaded directly by the issuers and external reviewers under a secure environment that uses blockchain technology to report on the bond’s investment and development impact performance.

The solution is part of IDB’s growing efforts to help address climate change, one of the key priority areas defined in its Vision 2025 strategy. Last year, the bank announced an ambitious climate target to provide $24 billion for climate and green finance over the next four years, the release noted.

“The post-pandemic economic recovery in Latin America and the Caribbean needs to be green and sustainable and transparent which is why the IDB is committed to maximise its financial and technical support to help the region achieve this goal,” said Mauricio Claver-Carone, President of the IDB. “The Green Bond Transparency Platform is part of our holistic technical and financial assistance toolkit to support issuers to mobilise domestic and international investments into projects that can have an important impact on the region’s development.”

The Platform, which has received over 50,000 visits since it was created, provides benchmark data to all market actors, new and existing issuers, investors, public sector regulatory authorities in their decision-making process and facilitate research on the regional bond market. The GBTP is taxonomy-neutral, open, and user-friendly and thus allows replicability in other regions outside of Latin America and the Caribbean and for other types of thematic bonds, the release said.

“GBTP closes an important information gap in the green bond market, allowing investors to better track whether these bonds are delivering on their development promise,’’ said Susana Cordeiro Guerra, manager of the IDB’s Institutions for Development Sector. “It is easy to use and open to anyone to view the information, promoting greater transparency and facilitating both reporting and analysis of the bonds.”

The “Initiative of the Year – Green Bond” Award is voted by 50 investors from around the globe and it recognises the teams who work to grow and develop the green bond market through their innovative thinking, thought-leadership, and strategic and innovative thinking.

The Platform was commended by the judges of the award, for promoting comparability in impact reporting from multiple issuers and for a focus on emerging markets, according to Environmental Finance.

“This Award is a testimony of the IDB Group’s continued support to develop the green bond market in Latin America and the Caribbean. Over the past six years, we have provided technical and financial assistance for more than 20 per cent of green bond issuances by volume in the region,” said Juan Ketterer, Chief of the Connectivity Markets and Finance team at the IDB. “The GBTP will provide crucial data for more investors to enter this market and finance key development projects in our region.”

Ketterer also added that the IDB will continue to leverage data of the Green Bond Transparency Platform to support the development of new solutions. In this framework, the IDB utilises the GBTP data to better understand local and global investors’ needs to invest in this market.

“Investor appetite in green bonds has grown exponentially in the last few years,” said Gema Sacristán, Chief Investment Officer at IDB Invest. “We are committed to providing the best comprehensive value proposition through financial products, advisory and knowledge to our private sector clients to continue expanding the green bonds market in Latin America and the Caribbean.”