Thank you Chairman for giving NDB an opportunity to attend this meeting.
We at NDB, in three years’ time, are expected to lend USD 10 billion for infrastructure. As Mr. Balduino indicated, we have done our first few project approvals, including green projects. Going forward, we will continue to place emphasis on green projects.
We believe that going green is a compelling economic proposition, besides being good for the world. We are also looking to diversify our funding base and our first issuance will be in local currency. One of the challenges developing countries face is the cost of financing, which gets impacted by volatile currency movements. We are trying to see if accessing local currency and providing these to the borrowers would address this problem.
We believe there is lot of opportunity in local currency issuance and thus,
we will make our first green bond issue in Reminibi Chinese market in the next few months.
We will then follow up in other local market with similar instruments. Indeed, as we go along, we will access global markets.
Clearly, our mandate is to cooperate with other MDBs and to learn from them. In that context, we have reached out to all MDBs and we have received great cooperation from our friends in MDBs.
Thank you!