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230 Economic Survey 2021-22

6.63 India is actively contributing to the global efforts towards green finance. RBI joined
the Central Banks and Supervisors Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS) as a
member on April 23 , 2021 and has begun participating in the work streams of the NGFS. On
rd
November 3, 2021, RBI published a ‘Statement of Commitment to Support Greening India’s
Financial System - NGFS’ and committed to:
i. Exploring how climate scenario exercises can be used to identify vulnerabilities in RBI
supervised entities' balance sheets, business models and gaps in their capabilities for
measuring and managing climate-related financial risks
ii. lntegrating climate-related risks into financial stability monitoring

iii. Building awareness about climate-related risks among regulated financial institutions
and spreading knowledge about issues relating to climate change and methods to deal
with them accordingly.

6.64 The liberalised External Commercial Borrowings (ECB) norms of RBI have enabled the
Indian renewable energy companies and other firms to tap the ECB route for raising finance
through green bonds and sustainable bonds, reflecting the growing attractiveness of this route
for raising finance.

6.65 India is also a part of several bilateral and global sustainable finance initiatives. RBI is
a member of a Task Force on Climate-related Financial Risks set up by the Basel Committee
on Banking Supervision, and the International Platform on Sustainable Finance. The latter is a
forum of public authorities from 17 countries, which is working on Environmental, Social and
Governance (ESG) Disclosures and a Sustainable Finance Taxonomy. In October 2021, RBI has
also been featured in the first Annual Report on Sustainable Financial Regulations and Central
Bank Activities published by the World Wide Fund for Nature.

Investing in Resilience for Sustainable Development

6.66 There has been an increasing recognition that ESG issues can put the performance of
companies at risk. In this regard, SEBI has been one of the early adopters of sustainability
reporting for listed entities and requires mandatory ESG related disclosures as part of the
Business Responsibility Report (BRR), for the top 100 listed entities (by market capitalisation)
since 2012. The above requirement of filing BRR was progressively extended to the top 500
entities (from financial year 2016-17) and later to the top 1000 listed entities (from the financial
year 2019-20). SEBI in February 2017, had encouraged the top 500 listed entities to adopt the
framework of Integrated Reporting, issued by the International Integrated Reporting Council,
on a voluntary basis.

6.67 In May 2021, SEBI issued new sustainability reporting requirements as per the Business
Responsibility and Sustainability Report (BRSR) which shall replace the existing BRR to bring
in greater transparency through disclosure of ESG-related information and by enabling market
participants to identify and assess sustainability-related risks and opportunities. The BRSR is
more outcome oriented and is focussed on having granular and quantifiable metrics, seeking
disclosures from listed entities on their performance against the nine principles of the ‘National
Guidelines on Responsible Business Conduct’. The disclosures under each of these principles