Lima: The financial arm of the World Bank is considering issuing about $2bn in bonds to finance environmentally friendly projects in Peru, the nation’s economy minister said.
Economy Minister of Peru, Alfredo Thorne (pictured), during a state television programme on Saturday, in which President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski interviews various personalities, said the bonds would be used to finance projects such as reforestation in the Amazon.
The International Finance Corporation (IFC), an arm of the World Bank, “is thinking of doing an emission of green bonds here, and that’s going to give us $2bn, more or less,” Thorne said, without giving details of the issuance.
Thorne said that while Peru has not yet developed a reforestation industry, it is receiving help from the World Bank, the Interamerican Development Bank and Norway. Green bonds, a type of instrument used to raise funds to tackle environmental problems, have had a slow start in Latin America. The IFC issued the first green bond in the Peruvian market in 2014 for 42 million soles ($12.8m).
Peru is an emerging market economy characterised by a high level of foreign trade. The inequality of opportunities has declined: between 1991 and 2012 Peru's rating on The World Bank's Human Opportunity Index improved substantially as increased public investment in water, sanitation and electric power has sustained the downward trend in inequality of opportunities.
