Russia and SCO countries discuss creation of standards for sustainable financing

Russia presented the countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) with the best practices for supporting investors and proposed unifying approaches to sustainable financing: how to assess environmental, social, managerial, and non-financial risks. This was announced by Nikita Kondratyev, Director of Multilateral Economic Cooperation and Special Projects of the Ministry of Economic Development of Russia, following a meeting of the SCO working group on investment in China's Tianjin. This is reported by the official website of the Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation.

"Sustainable projects are impossible without exhaustive tools for attracting capital. [...] Our goal is to create an effective regional architecture of sustainable finance, which will take into account the peculiarities of doing business in the SCO countries," Nikita Kondratyev noted.

At the meeting, the parties discussed how to improve the investment climate, protect investments and attract capital to priority sectors. Particular attention was paid to mechanisms that allow launching projects on favourable terms.

Sustainable (or green) financing is an approach to investment that takes into account not only profit, but also environmental, social and governance factors (the so-called ESG principles).

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