“It will create a Spanish forum on sustainable finance that unites the public sector, the Administration, with the private sector, with the supervisors, with the rating…” to facilitate the implementation of all the regulations linked to the National Plan for Sustainable Finance. This was stated by Pablo de Ramón-Laca, director general of the Treasury, at the second annual meeting of Finresp, the Center for Responsible and Sustainable Finance , which is being held this Tuesday morning in Madrid, and which is also being broadcast on-line. De Ramón-Laca has taken the opportunity to clarify that the reopening, this Thursday, of the treasury green bond, it will be “for a small amount”. See more news on the specialized portal elEconomista Sustainable investment and ESG.
The National Plan, has warned, “not as prescriptive as some fear, there is no lack of regulation, nor legislative initiatives to implement; it is about coordinating to ensure the least costly possible implementation for the entities, but in the most efficient and rapid way”, he added. “We are negotiating a first draft between the different ministries and it is a fruitful and productive negotiation, but in the I can’t reveal much more,” he added.
“Green bonds allow us to achieve a financial advantage over other issues,” said the director general of the Treasury
“Already in the Declaration of Climate Emergency, the Government decided to design this National Plan for Sustainable Finance”, which is nothing more than “the attempt to reprogram the financial system towards objectives that are for the whole of society”, said the director of the Treasury . The preparation of this Plan is in charge a specific working groupwhich is the same one that structured Spain’s inaugural green bond, issued last September: according to De Ramón-Laca, “the investor base is willing to pay for a green bond, but structuring it is enormous work at the coordination level interministerial”.
The Director General of the Treasury highlighted, as he did last November in the framework of the I elEconomista ESG Forum, the advantages of green debt: “It allows diversifying the investor base, as well as obtaining a financial advantage over other issues, precisely because that is what the investor base wants,” he emphasized. The placement last September meant “a saving of between 2 and 3 basis points compared to what it would have been to issue a normal 20-year bond,” she explained. “The greenium -green premium- in the secondary market is widening up to 4 basic points”, she has detailed. He has also alluded to the reason why that first issue was only 5,000 million, when the demand was 60,000. “We were particularly demanding with the programs that we demanded within the General State Budgets.” De Ramón-Laca added that, although the work to carry out this type of issue is huge, “once you issue you realize that the investor base is different; there are investors exclusively dedicated to these funds”.
Roldán asks for concreteness
“We need fewer apostles, and more plumbers, of climate change”, claimed, for his part, José María Roldán, president of the Spanish Banking Association (AEB) and Finresp, at the same event. Roldán thus alluded to the need for greater “concretion” with regard to sustainable finance.
“The European taxonomy has been a big step, but I still miss that specificity. We need to specify the strategies”. On the other hand, he stressed that this taxonomy has not been achieved without conflict either: “It was not a peaceful first step”, he stated, alluding to the controversies generated by the inclusion of nuclear energy and gas as green energies within this classification of activities. “What we want is for it to be unique, that is, we don’t want, in addition to the European taxonomy, exist subtaxonomies in each statedepending on whether or not the EU seems good to us,” he warned.
Roldán has highlighted the tension that the financial sector is undergoing, in the run-up to the ECB stress tests, which from this year will already include environmental issues: “We have to recognize the efforts and pressure that the financial sector receives and, allow me, the The stress tests that the ECB is going to launch are tremendously demanding considering that we do not have a scientific specification of how to measure many of the impacts. put the cart before the oxen, we accept that it is part of what is required, but we also need recognition that what is being demanded of us is very powerful”. The financial sector, he added, “cannot be the police of climate change; socially, it is unsustainable for us to have this role “. It will not be accepted by society” that we are the executors, it has to be the public sector “, he has emphasized.
Ribera: taxonomy “without edges”
For her part, Teresa Ribera, Vice President of the Government and Minister for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge, highlighted the “fundamental” role in the process of decarbonising the economy. “It is key that the green agenda requires investors to incorporate responsible investment guidelines. Sustainable finance in which positive discrimination is made in favor of what contributes the most to mitigating this type of risk.” In this sense, the entities are developing strategies that “increasingly mobilize more resources”, and “there is an increasing appetite for green debt issues”. Ribera has pointed out that, in this area, “we have been learning, thanks to the Sustainable Finance Platform that has given rise to this taxonomy, to this list of recommendations from the group of financial actors represented in the Commission’s advisory group Union to be able to mark, without a doubt and with total clarity, which are the technologies that contribute the most” to decarbonizing the economy. “We, from the Government, continue to advocate for a taxonomy without edges, due to that recommendation made at the time by the Sustainable Finance Platform”. Said Platform was shown, as Spain has also done, against the inclusion of nuclear energy and gas in the green taxonomy.
