Green debut

Green bonds can help lower borrowing cost

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) last week for the first time issued sovereign green bonds — worth Rs 8,000 crore — on behalf of the Government of India. The initial announcement in this regard was made by Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in her 2022 Budget speech. The government had later announced it would issue such bonds worth Rs 16,000 crore this year as part of the overall market borrowing programme. There are investors who are willing to accept comparatively low returns to support green initiatives. Some institutional investors are also mandated to invest part of their corpus in