In June 2021, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) published a report entitled, “Sustainable Issuer versus Sustainable Issuance: Providing Public Issuers of Sustainable Bonds in Latin America and the Caribbean with Insight into the Nascent Universe of ESG Ratings.”
“Since 2015, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) has been supporting public issuers (any issuer benefiting from the sovereign guarantee: sovereign and sub-sovereign, and publicly owned corporations such as public financial institutions or public utilities) in LAC to issue thematic bonds.
Based on recent works and on experiences from LAC issuers, complemented by inter- views of experts, this study aims to provide public issuers with insight into the nascent world of ESG evaluations and assessments, ratings, scoring, and profiles, so that they can begin to think about how to engage. It pro- vides a pragmatic roadmap to LAC public issuers and addresses the following questions:
- What is an ESG profile or an ESG performance assessment for a public issuer?
- What are investors focusing on when assessing a public issuer sustainability profile? Are public entities such as NDBs and SOEs assessed the same way as sovereigns or their private peers in the sector?
- Which tools and services are available, and what are their limitations in terms of methodology, incentives, data, and materiality?
- What are some key considerations for public issuers who decide to participate, understand, and potentially improve their ESG profile?”
You can read the report on the publications page of the IDB internet site.