In the context of increasingly serious climate change, the trend of sustainable development and green economy has become an inevitable choice for countries.
As a state-owned commercial bank playing a key role in agriculture, farmers, and rural areas, Agribank clearly defines its responsibility not only to provide capital but also to play a leading role, creating and spreading green transformation in the economy, especially in the agricultural and rural sectors – which are directly affected by climate change. Attending today's Conference, Agribank would like to share some results of green credit implementation and propose solutions to promote green capital flows to spread more deeply and widely in the economy.
The role of green credit
Green credit plays the role of a financial "blood vessel", orienting the capital flow of the economy towards sustainable development goals. For the banking system and the entire economy, green credit is not just a trend but a strategic management tool that brings many core impacts, specifically:
Promoting economic restructuring (From "Brown" to "Green"): Green credit plays the role of guiding cash flow, cutting capital for polluting projects and injecting capital into environmentally friendly sectors.
Passport" protects export turnover: Thanks to green credit, Vietnamese businesses will have capital to meet the strict standards of major markets such as the EU, USA, and Japan.
New generation FDI magnet: Expanding green credit helps Vietnam meet the clean energy requirements of multinational corporations.
Realizing the Net Zero 2050 commitment and protecting environmental security: Green credit provides huge resources to adapt to climate change, protect national resources and properly implement the commitment to bring net emissions to zero (Net Zero) by 2050.
Practical operations of Agribank in deploying green credit
As of the end of 2025, Agribank continues to be the leading bank in the system in terms of the number of customers granted credit in the green sector with nearly 39,000 customers. Total green credit balance reached nearly 28,000 billion VND, mainly focusing on renewable energy and clean energy (accounting for 53%), sustainable forestry (accounting for 27%), green agriculture (20%). In 2026, Agribank continues to promote the implementation of green credit programs. These are not only figures on credit scale but also reflect Agribank's efforts in transforming ESG commitments into specific capital flows, directly supporting the green transformation process of the economy.
Solutions Agribank is implementing to promote green credit
Agribank has been and is implementing solutions to promote green credit such as integrating environmental and social risk assessment into the internal credit granting process: Agribank has integrated environmental and social risk assessment into the credit granting process and cooperated with international organizations to build an environmental and social risk management system.
Implementing preferential credit programs towards green and sustainable credit, specifically: In recent years, Agribank has implemented many large-scale credit programs to serve the development of green agriculture, high-tech agriculture and sustainable production models.
Notable are the loan program to encourage the development of high-tech agriculture and clean agriculture with a minimum scale of 50,000 billion VND; the credit program to implement the Sustainable Development Project of one million hectares of specialized high-quality, low-emission rice associated with green growth in the Mekong Delta region with a minimum capital scale of 30,000 billion VND.
Not only focusing on corporate customers, Agribank also expands green credit to individual customers through credit programs for OCOP products, the "Green Start - Accompanying You" electric vehicle loan program, the "Green Credit" program with a scale of 10,000 billion VND for projects and business plans in the green sector; the S&T preferential loan program "Mechanization - Enhancing Agricultural Value" and the "Low-Emission Rice Production, Processing and Consumption Linked Loan" product in the Mekong Delta region.
Regarding training activities, Agribank has cooperated with units such as SBV, IFC, GIZ to open training courses for all staff in the Agribank system (directly and through the online e-learning training system) on ESG, green finance, green climate,...
Besides the achieved results, the implementation of green credit at Agribank is still facing some difficulties and obstacles.
From a mechanism and policy perspective: There is no national green economic sector system and a list of green projects that are standardized and publicized on the Electronic Information Portal to serve as a basis for collecting data and evaluating projects according to ESG standards.
From the customer's perspective: Most customers do not have complete environmental records, the capacity to prepare ESG reports is still weak, production scale is often small and lacks collateral.
From the perspective of personnel and loan terms: There is still a shortage of experienced and specialized human resources in the field of environment and society to deploy green and social credit products. Besides, there are difficulties in balancing capital sources because green projects often require long-term capital sources with low interest rates.
Proposing solutions to implement in the coming time
Solutions for difficult groups from the mechanism and policy side: It is necessary to soon complete a unified system of regulations on green credit (with a focus on the green economic sector system) and have customer support mechanisms.
Solutions for difficult groups from customers: Promote support programs, technical advice and improve capacity to prepare environmental profiles and ESG reports, guide businesses to complete organic standards, circulatory standards and international certifications.
Solutions for Agribank: Continue to optimize capital sources, prioritize allocating resources to green projects with large spillover effects. Continue to improve internal policies to integrate ESG in general and social environmental risk assessment activities in particular into the credit granting process. Promote training to improve the capacity of officials throughout the system.
With close coordination between the banking system, management agencies and the business community, green credit can completely become an important driving force to promote green growth and sustainable development. Agribank is committed to continuing to strive, innovate and accompany businesses, contributing to the effective implementation of the national strategy on green economic development.
