Howard Bamsey (left), CEO of Green Climate Fund, at the signing of the agreement with IFC
- The Green Climate Fund has signed an agreement with International Finance Corporation (IFC) to allow IFC to mobilise its own resources for projects overseen by the fund, which have already attracted US$10 billion from more than 40 governments.
- CDC Group, the UK’s development finance institution, has made a US$10 million investment in Veritas Finance, a Chennai-based financial services firm. Veritas has existed for almost three years and lends short-term loans as well as working capital to micro, small and medium-sized enterprise (MSMEs) in unbanked or underserved areas.
- EcoWorth Tech, a specialist industrial water treatment firm, has received more than three-quarters of a million US dollars in venture capital and crowd-funding for it to continue its impact in the sector. Just short of US$200,000 was secured from Budding Innovations, a private investment group. FundedHere, a leading Singapore-based crowd-funding platform, raised around a third of the total.
- French development finance institution Proparco has signed a €90 million loan to Enel Green Power to finance a 254 megawatt photovoltaic solar power plant, the second largest in South America. The plant is located in the municipality of Tabocas do Brejo Velho in the State of Bahia, and is expected to generate more than 550 gigawatt hours a year.
- Hermes Investment Management has launched a fund named Hermes Impact Opportunities Strategy that offers its clients more environmental and social investment options for investment. The fund is a concentrated global equity portfolio consisting of 25 to 50 securities held over five to 10 years. Hermes aims to invest in companies linked to at least one Sustainable Development Goal drawn up by the United Nations.
- The African Development Bank (AfDB) has lent US$100 million through its public sector window to MauBank Holdings Ltd to grow thousands of SMEs in Mauritius. The bank’s mission is to expand its SME business and catalyse private sector investment in sectors that include manufacturing, trade, agriculture, aquaculture, ICT and transport.
- AfDB also announced this week a loan of US$324 million to support renewable energy projects in Morocco (solar power) and Côte d’Ivoire (hydropower), both of which are expected to boost power in each respective country and sustain economic growth.
- PepsiCo and the PepsiCo Foundation, in collaboration with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), have announced the creation of the Hydro-BID Support Center for Latin America and the Caribbean. The Hydro-BID helps IDB member countries plan for and manage changes in water availability by using climate analytics to measure the flow and volume of water in arid and stressed areas. The Hydro-BID will be piloted in Argentina, Peru, Ecuador, Brazil, and Haiti.