Kuala Lumpur (21st September 2022) - Malaysia is committed to net zero carbon by 2050, with efforts being put in place to further drive this national agenda by which everyone has a role to play in terms of ensuring that climate change issues are appropriately addressed.
Speaking during a wrap up session during the one-day conference, “Developing and Financing Green Housing in Asia”, Cagamas Berhad (Cagamas) President/Chief Executive Officer Datuk Chung Chee Leong said Cagamas is embarking on building blocks to ensure that it will have more supply of green certified houses in the future.
“There will be provision of more mortgages as well as more green bonds and sukuk,” he said in his closing remarks at the conference organised by Cagamas, in collaboration with the ASEAN Catalytic Green Finance Facility and the ASEAN+3 Asian Bond Markets Initiative.
The conference brought together participants across Asia, including investors, financial regulators, policy makers, developers and representatives from corporations, and offered a unique opportunity for the private and public sectors to exchange views, discuss the current initiatives and priorities to further strengthen the capacity in developing and financing the green housing agenda.
“I believe today’s conference has provided us some insights and tremendous experience and knowledge has been shared by the various speakers,” he added.
Meanwhile, Asian Development Bank Advisor, Satoru Yamadera said transparency in stakeholder communications is critical.
“They need to talk to all stakeholders, not just shareholders, (but) all customers, employees who are really relevant or maybe in the society in general. Transparency is really the key,” he pointed out.
Bank Negara Malaysia Deputy Governor, Datuk Jessica Chew Cheng Lian who delivered the opening keynote address said the financial sector has a critical role in helping the economy and society mitigate risks.
“As part of our mandate to manage risks to financial stability, we expect financial institutions to understand how climate-related risk drivers can impact their risk exposures - including credit, market and insurance risks from their lending, underwriting and investment activities.
“We expect financial institutions to be able to identify, measure and manage these risks well. Second, we believe that the financial sector can and should play a catalytic role in the transition towards a low carbon economy through its control of resources that fuel the economy”.
She also said that beginning from July this year, financial institutions have started reporting their climate related risk exposures based on the Climate Change and Principle-based Taxonomy developed for the financial sector to assess and classify economic activities within their portfolios.
Aside from building a strong foundation for risk assessments and disclosures, the taxonomy is expected to encourage the flow of capital towards supporting transition activities.