Skopje, 27 July 2023
The European Investment Bank values the activities undertaken by the National Bank in the past couple of years in the field of green finance and is willing to support the activities planned for the period 2023-2025. Given the significance of the climate risks globally, including to financial system, the green and sustainable economy became one of the National Bank’s strategic goals since 2020. In 2021, the National Bank joined the International green finance network which includes central banks and financial regulators, while in 2022 a survey was conducted for the first time, to assess the awareness of these risks and the way they are managed by the banking system. The National Bank is about to complete the three-year Green Finance Support Strategy.
At the meeting, the Governor pointed out that the National Bank’s Green Finance Support Strategy will affect several segments, among which the financial stability, banking regulation and supervision, monetary policy, research, financial markets and the further development of the organizational culture and capacities in the National Bank Some of the more important activities within the Strategy are the guidelines for bank’s operations in the field of climate risk management, as well as the stress-tests to assess the banking system’s resilience to climate change.
The EIB representative Björn Gabriel, positively assessed the National Bank’s previous activities and expressed willingness to support the implementation of the Strategy through the EIB program “Greening Financial Systems”. The support will be aimed at building up the capacities for assessing the impact of climate risks on the banking system's stability, precautions, policy development, regulative framework and appropriate instruments to deal with risks. The National Bank organized a workshop to discuss in details the forms and the way of support between the EIB and the National Bank employees.
The National Bank’s prior efforts for the growth of green finance have resulted in significant progress. Since the beginning of collecting green loans data in the country (late 2019), the total amount of green loans has doubled as of the first quarter of the year. In this period, the green loans or loans for financing renewable energy, energy efficiency, sustainable agriculture and technological innovations, increased and now account for 3.7% of the total loans. The National Bank supports green finance through a set of measures, as well as through amendments to the reserve requirement.
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