[Music] hello you are watching a series of interviews on the AFC activities and today we are having a special guest MrYasin anir MrAnwar is a chairman of the green investment principles uh Mranoir Welcome to our studio we are glad to have you here and uh our first question will be based on your background uh given your extensive background in international Banking and as a former governor of the state of Bank of Pakistan how do you assess the current state of sustainable financing in Central Asia what are the Region's primary challenges and opportunities thank you very much first of all for inviting me to this important podcast I'm delighted to be here this is my second time in aana and I'm very delighted that aifc uh is hosting this event because it's a very very important event and aifc represents an excellent platform for launching the programs uh that are appropriate for the participants to expand their knowledge base as well as invest in this particular region Kazakhstan represents obviously a very very important focal point for the the investment opportunities for sustainable finance and uh kazakistan along with the other Central Asian republics have have a huge opportunity to capitalize on this sustainable Finance which is necessary for not only kazakistan but other countries in the region that have similar issues related to all the emerging market economies and those common issues are for example conversion to alternative energy from fossil fuels kazakhistan like Mongolia and others are 90% dependent on fossil fuels Coal Fire plants and they need to convert over the period of next few decades to carbon neutrality as um embarked by the United Nations ESG standards the sdgs that are required to be met so it's best to start as soon as possible and convert to those policies that are commensurate with sustaining those achieving those goals and to achieve those you have to start right away over the next 10 20 30 years it will take a long time and that requires infrastructure financing and that area of course this opens up the floodgates to uh whole new Avenue questions that you would ask how to achieve that because infrastructure is the backbone of or engine of the growth of any economy because it generates employment small mediumsized Enterprises and other opportunities for the growth of that country and the betterment of the people it's concerned with and as a former Central Banker that was my main Charter was to not only have proper uh fiscal policy or monetary policy to to achieve those end results but also Financial stability for the betterment of the public and the consumer that is obviously interested in ensuring that the inflation targets are met inflation is not sky- high so that they can afford the living uh standards that they wish to achieve now this is an important area poverty alleviation for example take for example China has eliminated over the last 30 years 750 million people out of poverty what took the United States 200 years to achieve so that's an example of success story and there are other success stories that we talk about from country to country but that would take a whole day of a podcast yeah I see so it's better to start sustainability driven campaigns as soon as possible yeah yes it is and uh aifc is doing that is bringing along people from all over the world who have different levels of expertise and they're sharing that expertise how to initiate those kinds of example Gip green investment principles that you mentioned earlier has got one of those objectives and as a result of those objectives that were set out about two and a half three years back when I was asked to become the chairman of this region we set out an ambitious goal to try and get as many applicants as possible to support this effort this common effort that is a global effort and we have achieved some Su successes uh during this time we have achieved about 1. 4 1. 6 billion in uh projects in kazakistan and for the region alone about two and a half billion so that gives you an idea from starting from scratch we're on that trajectory obviously there's a long way to go to achieve that there hundreds of billions of dollars that are required uh over the next few decades in China alone there's one Province for transition Finance to convert to this over the next decades is $2 trillion and the global effort as a multiple of that and trillions and trillions of dollars and how and where that's going to come from there are ways and means of doing that but that's where we have to go step by step and get a common ground and of understanding of policies and Frameworks that enables us to capitalize on the resources that are available globally to achieve that sustainable Finance goal yeah I see so uh thank you very much for also uh telling us your point with examples like China and the US when like comparing those how long it took it's quite clear now uh what EX examples to follow yeah and also our next question would be uh Central Asia has been experiencing rapid Economic Development how do you envision sustainable Finance integrating into these growths good question this is going this is a challenging task um Kazakhstan has grown for the last 20 years at 6.
2% um Central Asia has grown at a growth rate of about 5. 2% % and the rest of the world globally if you take growth rates are about 2.
