Transitioning to a Green Economy: Financial Stability Implications
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Virtual Executive Panel – Transitioning to a Green Economy: Financial Stability Implications Babak Abbaszadeh: Hello everyone. I am Babak Abbaszadeh, president and CEO of Toronto Centre for Global Leadership in Financial Supervision. Welcome to our discussion on Transitioning to a Green Economy: Financial Stability Implications. I'm delighted that 1,140 participants have registered for this event, representing 110 countries all the way from Afghanistan, Angola to Zimbabwe and Zambia and all the letters of the alphabet in between, developed countries and developing economies. Since our inception in 1998 in the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis, Toronto Centre has trained more than 14,000 central bankers and supervisors from 190 countries to build more stable, resilient and inclusive financial systems. In 2016, we began incorporating climate change in our programming because of the substantial implications to global financial stability and risk of a crisis from climate change. We did this soon after Governor Carney's seminal speech, Breaking the Tragedy of Horizons, and the ratification of the Paris Agreement. Today, we're at a pivotal point to address this existential threat. We now have unprecedented global consensus of the urgent need to combat climate change, and to transition to a green or net zero economy. This transition presents a tremendous opportunity for countries to build back stronger post COVID-19 and achieve sustainable economic growth and poverty reduction. It is my honor to welcome our two internationally distinguished speakers, Sri Mulyani Indrawati and Mark Carney. Her excellency, Sri Mulyani is a seasoned, influential G20 Finance Minister for Indonesia. Minister Mulyani was just recently elected as the co-chair of the Coalition of Finance Ministers for Climate Action, a position she is sharing with her counterpart from Finland. Congratulations, Minister. She's also the former Managing Director and COO of the World Bank. Mark Carney has served as the central bank governor of two G7 countries and as the chair of the Financial Stability Board. He is currently a UN Special Envoy on climate action and finance, and finance advisor to UK Prime Minister for COP26. His herculean efforts and leadership put climate change on the radar of global financial system. I would also like to congratulate him on the publication of his fine, new, thought-provoking book, Value(s): Building a Better World for All, and we have some copies that we will distribute to some of the participants on a draw basis. Toronto Centre’s mission is supported foremost by Global Affairs Canada, Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency and the IMF but also Jersey Overseas Aid, Comic Relief, the USAID, World Bank and the Schulich School of Business. In terms of format, we will have three rounds. First, we start with progress and early lessons, then we move to implications for financial stability and inclusion, and then we will conclude with the impact of COVID-19. So Mark, we're doing a April 7, 2021 Page 1 of 17 Virtual Executive Panel – Transitioning to a Green Economy: Financial Stability Implications bit of the reverse of what you had said, credit, COVID, climate, but we do it in different order. I will pose three questions alternating between each speaker. They have five minutes to answer each question, then I will take questions from the audience. Please use the Q&A tab to submit your questions. Let's begin. My first question goes to Minister Mulyani. Minister, you're known as a successful reformist. What are the key reforms adopted addressing both the drivers and the impact of climate change? And what are the most important lessons for developing countries that you could share with our viewers? Thank you. Sri Mulyani Indrawati: Well, thank you so much for this invitation, and to have a chance to meet Mark Carney again, as well as to address the issue, which is very important, that is the climate change, especially during this pandemic time. This is really a challenging time, especially for many countries because the pandemic taking a lot of resources. So, from the policy point of view, especially on the fiscal side, we are taking quite a lot of our resource to address this pandemic. And let me share with you about several reforms related to the climate agenda, which is adopted in Indonesia. I think the most important, and also the most challenging for many developing countries to adopt is usually related to the subsidy on the fuel, because this is going to be one of the most important. When a country really wants to help the poor people, they usually use the subsidy through this commodity. And fuel is the most basic and important for many poor households, so changing the subsidy from commodity base into direct subsidies is going to be very critical. And Indonesia adopted that back in 2014, and also even before that, that was like in 2006. So, we use the amount which is saved from this subsidy into cash transfer directly to the poor. That's definitely have the implication for the CO2 emission, especially on climate related to the fuel. Many reforms on the fiscal side can be adopted in a very important way that is on the institution of the Ministry of Finance. For example, the Ministry of Finance, we build what we call it a green budgeting or budget tagging. That is, we are identifying how much resources we just allocated related to this kind of climate change agenda. So that will build credibility and accountability, especially when we, at the same time, also have the national commitment on the Paris agreement that we need to develop, to deliver and that's why mechanism to deliver and accountability is going to be very critical. Second one on the fiscal side, we can also diversify financing instrument by issuing a green bond both domestically and globally. Indonesia is among the emerging country who issued this green bond since 2018. When you issue this kind of financial instrument, especially at the global level, they will ask whether this green bond is credible, because they are going to link to what kind of program or project which is related to this green project or program. So, we have to be able to also have a mechanism to track domestically, linking this April 7, 2021 Page 2 of 17 Virtual Executive Panel – Transitioning to a Green Economy: Financial Stability Implications instrument to the project as well as the program. On a project site, we can identify is this the category is going to be a dark green, light green, which is going to be also critical. We also use the instrument for example, like tax facility in order for us to tilt the balance to work more, for example, renewable. The holiday tax allowance is going to be very important for us to be able to then tilt the incentive towards more renewable energy. For Indonesia is a bigger country in which we have more 34 provincial area, we have a transfer to the local government. So, for the Minister of Finance, you also have this instrument in order for you to incentivize local government because when you talk about the climate change, this cannot be done by one institution or by one level of government. It should be actually done holistically by all level of government, or even in this case globally. But within the country, you can really design this fiscal transfer as an incentive for government to incentivize, especially local government. This is especially related to the forests and forest management. Indonesia has been very successful in reducing the forest fire and deforestation in the past five years. And one of it is actually tried to use this fiscal transfer to incentivize local government in order for them to be able to care as well as taking care of the people who live in the surrounding of the forest so that they are also caring for this forest. In Indonesia, also, another thing that maybe can be shared by many developing countries is that we are geographically located in the ring of fire. So, when we have this kind of disaster, natural disaster, which frequently happen, then we need to establish a fiscal mechanism, financial mechanism also, that is going to address this disaster risk, financing and insurance. So, Ministry of Finance, in this case, had asked for us to be able to then establish this kind of pooling fund, especially because we are geographically very large. So, we can pool fund from different provincial area. I think this is also going to provide more certainty of support for area which is hit hard or hit frequently by this natural disaster. Last thing, we established an environment fund agency. This agency is not just the agency, but the agency is going to set up for managing the funding, including one of the most important is the carbon pricing or carbon tax initiative. This is going to be the first time for the Indonesia to introduce this instrument market base, which quantify or value the carbon. And we are going to then design how this is going to be introduced within the economy, market mechanism, who's actually managing this carbon price and carbon market. It's still relatively new. For me, I even in this case, start studying it and try to think about what kind of institutional setting and the price mechanism or price discovery for this kind of carbon. We learn a lot. You mentioned earlier that now I'm also playing a role as the co-chair of the Coalition of Finance Ministers on this climate change.