The Strategic Programme to Empower the People and Economy (Pemerkasa) will support the country’s sustainability agendas, especially towards achieving the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), said Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin.
The Prime Minister said the government, and the United Nations in Malaysia would set up the MySDG Trust Fund as a platform that allows funding from a variety of sources for SDG-compliant projects.
Muhyiddin, in unveiling Pemerkasa, also announced that the government would launch a Sustainable Sukuk, worth at least US$1 billion (RM4.121 billion).
“The proceeds from the sukuk will fund programmes and projects with sustainable elements, in addition to addressing the socio-economic impacts of the Covid-19 outbreak,” he said in his special address today.
The government’s RM20 billion additional economic stimulus package under the Program Strategik Memperkasa Rakyat dan Ekonomi (Pemerkasa) will provide some support to overall consumption spending affected by the pandemic, analysts said.STR/MOHD ADAM ARININ
The MySDG Trust Fund and the Sukuk Lestari are both listed in Focus Three – Strengthening the Country’s Competitiveness under Pemerkasa.
Muhyiddin said the government would increase the Market Development Grant ceiling from RM300,000 to RM500,000 for every company that participated in international exhibition platforms.
He also said to generate new sources of national wealth, a matching grant of RM50 million will be provided to develop the aerospace and medical devices industries.
Meanwhile, the International Trade and Industry Ministry, he added, would continue to explore new export potentials and encourage the use of automisation and mechanisation among industry players.
“As such, among the measures to be implemented include the eBizLink initiative, an online and hybrid digital marketing platform, and the Globepreneur initiative, which aims at enabling more high potential SME companies to access the international market,” he added.
In the wake of Trump’s presidency and amidst the coronavirus pandemic, it is no surprise that people’s trust in the government is at a new low. As the 2021 Edelman Trust Barometer reveals, many people are looking to businesses to solve the societal and environmental problems they no longer believe the government is equipped to confront. Despite this transfer of trust from government to businesses, most businesses are not living up to this new responsibility.
Big corporations are hostages to growth and wealth creation. There is no getting away from the fact that they are hooked, addict-like to feeding on numbers. Despite all the evidence, despite all the talk of a new corporate consciousness being awakened by the monumental challenges humanity faces, the profit card continues to trump the purpose one.
It is not that big businesses can’t have a purpose, they can. The issue is that they are simply not ever going to be fit enough to deliver a purpose. They are simply the wrong kind of beast. Meat-eating wolves don’t become grass-eating sheep though they can do a pretty good job of dressing up like them – some of the time.
That is where Single Organizing Idea comes in. As we all know, business as usual is over — the world of work has changed. Businesses without a greater purpose beyond profit are increasingly being called out, struggling to respond or simply failing. While business leaders know that the pressure on them needs to be urgently addressed, few have the tools or systems required to deliver the kind of changes being demanded. Adding to the complexity, and despite best intentions, too many consultants and advisors are using outdated or fragmented models that do little to address the immediate issues, or deliver the long-term systemic changes critically needed. Single Organizing Idea (SOI®) was created to solve this problem.
SOI® is a strategy tool and management system. First conceived in 2005 by Neil Gaught,
SOI® is the culmination of many years of obsession with the challenges facing the business world and the inadequacies of ‘purpose’ to address those challenges.
Purpose is a tarnished old idea that is being promoted by out-of-date, noisy, attention and lobbying reliant big businesses who are themselves no longer fit for purpose. Businesses possess an array of unique attributes and the potential to make a huge contribution to all our futures. They will fail us in this regard, however, if we expect tacking on a CSR team or sustainability campaign, without altering the profit-centered structure of the rest of the company, to have any significant impact.
SOI® allows companies to discover their true, sustainable potential, then embed it at the heart of their mission and actions. By operating at the intersection of their economic and social strategy, these businesses thrive while simultaneously creating sustainable progress for all. The days of businesses doing the bare minimum to appear as though they care about more than just profit are over. The innovative potential of business is unparalleled, we must simply provide businesses with the tools to combine their strategy for growth with their strategy for benefiting people and the planet.
America’s JP Morgan Chase has pumped more than the GDP of Finland into fossil fuels expansion since the Paris climate accord of 2015, while Japan’s and China’s mega banks have also been ‘failing miserably’ in their response to climate change over the last four years, a report from a coalition of NGOs has shown.
It’s as if the penny hasn’t dropped for the financial services industry that climate change is not only an increasingly disruptive environmental phenomenon, but a grave risk to the stability of the global economy.
Financial support for the fossil fuel industry has increased every year since the Paris Agreement came into being in 2015, according to a new report, Banking on Climate Change 2020, from a collective of environmental groups including Rainforest Action Network, BankTrack and Indigenous Environmental Network.
The Paris Agreement recommended that global warming be capped at 2°C above pre-industrial levels to avoid the most devastating effects of climate change. To do so, scientists say greenhouse gas emissions, the bulk of which come from the burning of fossil fuels, must be slashed.
However, the report found that 35 global banks have not only been maintaining but expanding the fossil fuels sector, with more than US$2.7 trillion in investments made since 2015.
It is unconscionable for banks to be approving new loans and raising capital for the companies that are pushing hardest to increase carbon emissions.
Alison Kirsch, climate and energy leader researcher, Rainforest Action Network
United States-headquartered banks JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citi and Bank of America have accounted for 30 per cent of all fossil fuel financing from the major global banks since the Paris accord.
JPMorgan Chase, which recently announced it will close one-fifth of its branches in the US in response to the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic, pumped US$269 billion—more than the gross domestic product of Finland—into the fossil fuels sector over the last four years, notably in fossil fuel expansion, Arctic oil and gas, offshore oil and gas, and fracking.
In Asia, Tokyo-headquartered Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG) was the region’s biggest fossil fuel financer and the world’s sixth-biggest financier, investing US$119 billion since 2015.
The investments in fossil fuels made by the world’s biggest 35 banking institutions between 2016 and 2019. Source: Banking on climate change report.
Counting out coal
China’s mega banks were found to be world’s biggest financiers of coal—the single biggest driver of greenhouse gas emissions—since the Paris Agreement. China Construction Bank and Bank of China are the biggest bankers of coal mining, pumping US$25 billion into the sector between them. The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and Bank of China were the heaviest funders of coal power globally, investing US$42 billion combined, according to the report.
However, financial support for the carbon-intensive fuel is dwindling globally, the report noted. Finance to the top 30 coal mining companies fell by 6 per cent between 2016 and 2019, while finance to the top 30 coal power companies shrank by 13 per cent.
Though China’s banks are a noteable exception, the report found that 26 of the 35 banks in the report now have policies restricting coal finance, which has helped to push the finance sector away from coal. China’s big four banks do not have any climate policies in place.
A growing minority of the world’s biggest banks—now 16—now also restrict finance to some oil and gas sectors. The report said European banks have the toughest fossil fuel lending restrictions. France’s Crédit Agricole, the Royal Bank of Scotland and Italy’s Unicredit are said to have the most progressive climate policies.
Banking on Paris
The majority of the world’s top banks are signatories of frameworks such as the United Nations’ Principles for Responsible Banking and the Equator Principles, which commit banks to align their business strategies with the Paris Agreement.
But because potential emissions from the coal, oil and natural gas already in production exhaust the carbon budget for the 2°C warming limit of the Paris Agreement, any bank that supports the further expansion of the fossil fuel sector is Paris-incompatible, the report noted.
Alison Kirsch, climate and energy leader researcher, Rainforest Action Network, said that it is “crystal clear” that banks are “failing miserably” in their response to climate change and the decarbonisation of the global economy.
“As the toll of death and destruction from unprecedented floods, droughts, fires and storms grows, it is unconscionable and outrageous for banks to be approving new loans and raising capital for the companies that are pushing hardest to increase carbon emissions,” she said.
The report emerges at a time when the ongoing Covid-19 coronavirus is threatening to derail investment in renewable energy, according to the International Energy Agency.
