InfoSAWIT, JAKARTA – TuK Indonesia and Trisakti Sustainability Center did evaluate sustainable financial to 37 bank KBMI III, KBMI IV, and foreign banks in 2019 – 2021. The goal is about to know how far the banks implemented the regulation POJK 51/2017. The result analysis showed that social and economic aspects dominated in the period. The highest disclosure in Bank KBMI III and IV was social aspects that many banks did increasing social activity while foreign banks did increase economic aspect the most. In each category of disclosure, the environment aspect was the lowest though every year the banks showed increasing trend.
The other finding was 12 assessments of Kategori Kegiatan Usaha Berkelanjutan (KKUB) from 37 bank in the same period within about Rp 62.054 billion in total. KKUB increased in the period. The disclosure was dominated by Bank KBMI III. It is assumed for 3 bank syariah did merger, they were Mandiri Syariah, BNI Syariah, and BRI Syariah to be Bank Syariah Indonesia. The increasing assessment of KKUB showed bank awareness to sustainable financial roadmap in OJK got escalated. But the contrast finding was that four top banks in Indonesia, such as, BNI, BRI, Mandiri, and BCA still distributed finance in the sectors that are in forestry risks, such as, palm oil plantations, pulp and paper. BRI, for instance, in 2021, micro, small, and medium business (MSMB) portfolio finance reached Rp 543 million, and in the same time, the debts and loans which were given to pulp and paper sectors were much bigger reaching US$ 1.401 million or Rp 19,6 trillion.
Sustainable Finance Expert, Rahmawati Retno Winarni told, MSMB finance is categorized in the sustainable financial roadmap but it did not notice the environmental impacts. Automatically, it is not categorized as sustainable finance. In normative, MSMB finance can minimize gap but it really needs to compare the financial proportion to big scale business. Environmental finance was less than whole sectors that many banks claimed. In fact, environmental and social issues in Indonesia are in big numbers and various.
“TuK Indonesia found and showed that only 0,8 - 0,9% of the finance which was claimed to be sustainable. More than 99% of the finance in Indonesia can be said unsustainable or at least, agnostic to sustainability,” Rahmawati said, as in the official statement to InfoSAWIT, Wednesday (8/2/2023).
Campaign Chief and Public Education TuK INDONESIA, Linda Rosalina told that in procedure, the banks fulfilled their obligation as it is regulated in POJK 51/2017, such as, the arrangement of sustainability report. But in quantity the disclosure is bad still. The banks failed to reveal material facts in their sustainability reports.
“For all these years, sustainable financial practices in banks were weak, such as, in the awareness and misunderstanding in sectoral business process. It needs to escalate the capacity to develop the awareness and understanding that sustainability is not about fund needed. The concern to sustainability issues would be having its own competitiveness for the companies and would be potential for the companies to develop more when many claimed to get higher sustainability,” Linda said.
Minister of Environment in 1999 – 2001, Sonny Keraf told that there are three factors why sustainable finance is not effective yet, they are, the country still has orientation to develop economy. This is reflected by the finance decision for the banks which prioritized profits rather than environmental, social, and governance (ESG) work. The second, there is no power to force banks, and financial institutions to ESG work. The third, environmental law enforcement is not effective. For these happened, he offered that in the future every people, party could take action to strengthen the roles of OJK to monitor policy implementation in sustainable finance within the note, OJK should be open to strengthen its roles by involving the civil, such as, involve in sustainable financial taskforce to confirm that sustainable financial is consistently implemented. (T2)
