According to the State Bank, green credit activities recorded many positive results in terms of both the number of participating credit institutions and the scale of outstanding loans. To date, 82 credit institutions have implemented green credit with total outstanding loans reaching over 828 trillion VND, an increase of 4.6 times compared to the start of implementation in 2017, with an average growth rate of over 20% per year in the period 2017 - 2025.
However, capital sources are still mainly focused on the fields of renewable energy, clean energy and green agriculture; while many fields with large green transformation needs have not yet accessed commensurate capital sources.
Attending the workshop "Improving the efficiency of green credit capital flows, a driving force for economic growth" organized by Lao Dong Newspaper on the afternoon of June 23, from the perspective of environmental management, Mr. Nguyen Hong Quang - Deputy Director of the Department of Environment, Ministry of Agriculture and Environment - identified some existing problems and limitations mainly related to green credit issues.
First, the awareness and understanding of green credit, green finance, green investment, green projects and green classification are still not really unified between management agencies, credit institutions, businesses and investors.
This leads to differences in the process of policy making as well as implementation in practice. Many businesses, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, do not have enough information, technical capacity and resources to access the requirements related to green projects or ESG standards.
Second, although the legal framework for green credit has been gradually formed, it is still scattered in many documents in the fields of environment, finance, banking and investment. The inter-sectoral coordination mechanism in policy making, implementation organization, data sharing and results monitoring is not yet truly synchronized. In particular, the roadmap for implementing green credit according to the provisions of law needs to continue to be concretized to create a unified basis for relevant subjects.
Third, Vietnam's newly issued green classification list needs more time to operate stably and uniformly. Credit institutions, businesses, independent verification organizations and state management agencies still need more detailed technical guidance on methods of identifying, evaluating and verifying green projects. At the same time, the construction of a team of experts and a database to serve appraisal work also needs to be further invested in.
Fourth, the environmental data system serving green credit activities is still lacking and scattered. In fact, green credit not only requires assessing the debt repayment capacity of the project but also requires determining the level of greenhouse gas emission reduction, resource efficiency, adaptability to climate change and other environmental benefits.
However, the lack of measurement indices, standardized databases and information sharing mechanisms is increasing the cost of appraisal, monitoring and risk management.
Fifth, the mechanism for monitoring and evaluating environmental efficiency after disbursement is still limited. Meanwhile, this is a particularly important content to ensure that green credit capital is truly used for the right purpose and creates environmental benefits as committed.
Overall, Mr. Quang said that the above limitations show that Vietnam's current challenge lies in organizing the implementation and effective operation of the policy system and forming a synchronous, transparent and measurable green credit ecosystem.
