Green Debt Market in the MENA Region _ CEBC report _ November 2020

The Middle East and North Africa Green Debt Market Infographics Research was prepared by the Climate Finance Working Group of CEBC, with Mohammed Hassan Bellachhab and Maria Gharesifard as lead authors, under the guidance of Ahmed Samir Elbermbali.

The global green bond market over the past five years has quintupled in size to USD 754bn in 2019 and transformed into a broad sustainability-linked fixed income asset class, paying financial dividends while tackling some of the world’s most pressing climate and sustainability-related challenges. The MENA region is contributing to this uptrend trajectory, but accounts for less than 5% of global issuances. These emerging economies have started to use green fixed income instruments to redouble their efforts to diversify their energy mix. Both green sukuk – which are a specialty of the region and classical green bond instruments are having some momentum in the region, particularly in the UAE, where the private and public sectors have so far issued green bonds and sukuk worth 2.7 billion dollars; only since 2015. Other regional green bond issuers are from Morocco, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Qatar.