Africa-Press – Angola. The director of consultancy PwC, Nuno Cordeiro, said this Thursday that the implementation of environmental, social and governance (ESG) aspects in Angola constitutes a challenge of reconverting the economy model, while for Europe it is a challenge of economic and energy transition.
Nuno Cordeiro justifies his position, considering the fact that the country has only a weight in global CO2 emissions of 0.21%, an energy consumption with water or renewable origin of 66%, in addition to the availability of 100% of its own production capacity energy.
Based on these indicators, stressed Nuno Cordeiro, who was speaking at the first edition of the “Angola Banking Conference”, in aspects of ESG in Angola, the energy transition is not at stake, but it may show a need to reconvert the economic model.
In his view, strategic activities for the country should be identified and defined within the framework of the reconversion of the economic model and mentions some priority sectors, with emphasis on transport, electricity and water and telecommunications and health.
In the case of transport, for example, he referred to challenges related to gaps in the current infrastructure and in the respective operations, the impact on the performance of the logistics sector, connectivity costs of transatlantic transport.
Despite observing improvements in the energy sector, challenges were raised around limiting supply for business and industrial activity, as well as in rural areas.
Banks must be an active part
Pointing to banking institutions, he said that they should understand the ESG as a “happy coincidence”, since risk management will be done by the business.
The specialist calls on banks to be an active part of the reconversion strategy, promoting sectoral diversification policies, based on business and risk logic.
In the absence of a national “taxonomy”, it suggests that banks adopt an internal one, defining characteristics of the activities to be financed and aligning them with the country’s economic strategy.
It also defends the need for innovation in the supply of financing solutions, based on the social and environmental component.
Within the scope of these challenges, it calls on banks to avoid extreme approaches, such as banning funding to certain sectors.
During the presentation, Nuno Cordeiro lamented the fact that the discussion on ESG is decades old, but there is little clarity about its objectives.
Among the various discussions already developed around the theme, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (1992), COP3-Kyoto Protocol (1997), Paris Agreement (COP21-2015), Sustainable Development Goals (2015), One Planet Summit (2017), among others
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