In a press release issued on March 22, 2021 IDB Invest, the private sector institution of the IDB Group, announced that it “issued a gender social bond worth 2,500 million Mexican pesos (equivalent to approximately $122 million) with a three-year maturity in Mexico. This is the largest IDB Invest bond issue in Mexico to date and has been listed on the Mexican Institutional Stock Exchange (BIVA). The funds raised will finance projects aimed at promoting gender equality and the empowerment of women in the region, thus helping to advance the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal Number 5, Gender Equality.
The gender social bond is the second issuance by IDB Invest under its new sustainable debt framework, which was published in February this year. This framework allows IDB Invest to issue green, social or sustainable bonds and complies with the Green Bond Principles and Social Bond Principles published by the International Capital Markets Association (ICMA). The sustainability rating agency Vigeo Eiris has issued an independent verification, known as a second-party opinion, confirming the alignment of the IDB Invest framework with the principles published by ICMA and has also assigned it the highest rating within its contribution-to-sustainability scale.
- It is the first gender bond issued by a multilateral development bank in Latin America and the Caribbean.
- It is the second issuance of IDB Invest under its sustainable debt framework, which consolidates the institution’s commitment to the social, gender and inclusion agenda in the region.”
You can read the press release on the news page of the IDB internet site.