On November 2, 2021, the Sustainable Banking and Finance Network (SBFN) hosted a launch webinar for the third SBFN Global Progress Report - Accelerating Sustainable Finance Together. SBFN (formerly the Sustainable Banking Network, SBN) now represents 43 countries, 63 institutions from the emerging markets. Launched in 2012, SBFN is facilitated by IFC as Secretariat and technical partner, and supported by the World Bank Group. The National Bank of Georgia (NBG) joined SBFN in 2017 and has been a very active member of the network since then by leveraging and contributing to peer-to-peer knowledge sharing and common approaches.

The virtual launch event featured high-level representatives from IFC, World Bank, and SBFN members from Colombia, Georgia, Indonesia, Mongolia, Morocco, Nigeria, South Africa, and Ukraine. It presented exclusive country insights from the report, which is the most comprehensive benchmarking of national sustainable finance initiatives across emerging markets. Salome Tvalodze, leading the sustainable finance framework development at the NBG, represented the National Bank on one of the panels. She talked about the NBG’s experience regarding taxonomies, disclosure, climate risk management, and sustainable finance instruments and emphasized the importance of collaboration and coordination within and across countries in this process.

To strengthen member collaboration on common approaches, the event also featured the launch of two new SBFN Working Groups — Sustainable Finance Instruments; and Data and Disclosure. The NBG, represented by Ms. Tvalodze, became a Co-chair of the SBFN Data & Disclosure Working Group.

In addition to the global annual report, a number of individual Country Progress Reports will be released in the near future. Georgia’s Country Progress Report summarizes all the steps taken by the NBG since the previous report in 2019. One of the key milestones in the last two years was the launch of ESG Reporting and Disclosure Principles and the corresponding template. Following those guidelines, the commercial banks have disclosed ESG information that is now available on the NBG’s webpage.

Due to these and many other important actions undertaken by the NBG, Georgia has made significant progress towards the development of the sustainable finance framework and further advanced in SBFN's 6-step Progression Matrix. The NBG now stands at the Advancing Stage of the matrix.