Accelerating the Growth of Green Bonds in India
India's enormous financial requirements to address climate change and ensure just transitioning for its economy cannot be met by the lone public sector and would require catalyzing private finance and institutional investment into climate initiatives. Green bonds offer an emerging financial instrument that holds the potential to attract private investors into climate action. However, unlike the exponential growth of green bonds in the global market, they still occupy only a scanty share of the Indian bonds market.
The policy brief explores the challenges that have hindered the growth of the green bonds market in India, both, at the macro sovereign-market level, as well as the micro level of issuances. Followingly, it recommends measures to overcome these challenges, namely through taxonomy and standardization, fiscal and policy levels, awareness-building strategies, and innovative issuance strategies. Importantly, the brief stresses the importance of international climate finance, and the support of multilateral development banks in accelerating the growth of the green bonds market in India.