Quality infrastructure and skilled manpower must be ensured for making the green bond popular to facilitate proper implementation of climate and environment-friendly projects.
Experts on Wednesday at a seminar titled 'Introducing Green Bond in Bangladesh' opined this.
They also laid importance on launching green bond for sustainable development.
Bangladesh Academy for Securities Markets (BASM) organised the seminar at the office of the Bangladesh Securities and Exchange Commission (BSEC).
"The green bond should be the source of financing the environment friendly and climate related projects," Md. Ashadul Islam, senior secretary at financial institutions division, told the inaugural session of the seminar.
As chief guest of the session, Mr. Islam said there is a lack of quality infrastructure and skilled workforce in case of making the green bond popular.
"I hope the BASM will hold different seminars and programmes for the relevant stakeholders to make the green bond popular," Islam.
A green bond is a bond specifically earmarked to be used for climate and environmental projects.
The securities regulator has not yet formulated the rules for issuance of the green bond. A BSEC committee is working to formulate the rules of bonds and the issue of green bond will be included there.
At the seminar the BSEC chairman professor M. Khairul Hossain said sustainable financing is required for ensuring growth.
"The prospect of green financing is very bright for the infrastructure of transportations, and renewable energy," the BSEC chairman Mr. Hossain said.
After the seminar a technical sessions was also held on green bond at the BSEC office.
In a presentation, BSEC director Mohammad Rezaul Karim focused on the areas where green bonds can play vital role.
Along with speaking on the prospects of green bonds, Mr. Karim also highlighted the challenges of such debt instruments.
The challenges are difficulties of utilising green bond proceeds in eco-friendly projects, absence of guidelines, and the lack of awareness of issuers and investors regarding social and environmental benefits, Rezaul said.
Arijit Chowdhury, additional secretary at financial institutions division, Dr. Swapan Kumar Bala, member at BSEC, Md. Alamgir Hossain, member at NBR, Dr. M. Mosharraf Hossain, member at IDRA were the panel discussants of the technical session.
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