CAPE TOWN: The Inter­nation­al Finance Corporation (IFC), a unit of the World Bank, issued its first South African rand-denominated green bond Wednesday, raising around $71m for climate-friendly investments in emerging markets.

The nine-year 1 billion rand paper was issued at a yield of 8.72 per cent and marked the first time a green bond has been issued in South Africa by a multilateral institution.

“Green bonds are a powerful force for mobilizing international and domestic savings for climate finance,” said IFC Vice President and Treasurer Jingdong Hua in a statement.

FirstRand Bank Limited, one of South Africa’s largest banking groups, is the anchor investor and Rand Merchant Bank the sole manager for the transaction.

The IFC, founded in 1956, has previously issued similar bonds in Chinese and Indian currencies as part of efforts to build the asset class in developing markets. The World Bank unit said it expected its total green bond issuance to top $10bn by 2020 from around $4.5 billion now.

Should next week’s climate meeting in Paris lead to a binding agreement, including establishing a global standard on carbon pricing to encourage private sector involvement, Hua said demand for green financing will flourish.

“Solving global climate change requires trillions of dollars of investment. Only through the private sector, only through capital markets can the world raise this sort of money and green bonds are a critical element in crowding in that investment,” he told Reuters.

Published in Dawn, November 26th, 2015