SUSTAINABLE FINANCE LABORATORY

The Comprehensive Amazon Program for Forest Conservation and Sustainable Production-PROAmazonía hopes to link national efforts at reducing deforestation to national priority agendas and policies of the country’s economic sectors, in order to reduce the causes and agents of deforestation, and promote sustainable, integrated management of natural resources that will promote poverty reduction and sustainable human development.

Fiscal and economic incentives, as public policy instruments, are essential for influencing the market, and changing the behavior of economic agents towards sustainable, deforestation-free production systems.

Given the above, PROAmazonía fosters enabling conditions that allow a transition towards sustainable, deforestation-free production through its axis of transverse intervention in sustainable finance, by identifying, modifying, disseminating and strengthening capacities on: tax incentives, credit lines, financial mechanisms and responsible public purchasing.

A virtual space called the sustainable finance laboratory has been created; it consists of a series of webinars aimed at stakeholders such as: Internal Revenue Service-SRI, Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock, Ministry of Environment and Water, entities of the national financial system, financial sector of the Popular and Solidarity-Based Economy and producer organizations to strengthen technical knowledge on tax matters, provide access to formal financing, ensure responsible purchasing and sustainable finance to the technical teams of the aforementioned entities.

During September and October, four workshops were held with approximately 45 participants per event using an interactive methodology with the different target groups. National experts participated from the Internal Revenue Service and BanEcuador, as well as an international Consultant in Economics and Public Finance who provided training on the following topics:

September 17 Workshop: Tax incentives and obligations for Popular and Solidarity-Based Economy organizations, which helped representatives and administrative teams of Amazon associations to resolve their concerns about formal duties and tax benefits these organizations can access.
September 29 Workshop: Green Taxation; directed to the Internal Revenue Service team and technical staff of the Ministries of Agriculture and Livestock and the Ministry of Environment and Water. The conceptual framework and international experience with green taxation were presented in this workshop and strengthened the technical skills of the participants.
October 1 Workshop: Access to formal financing; this webinar was aimed at producer organizations and strengthened knowledge about credit conditions and identified gaps in access to credit for rural women.
October 8 Workshop: This webinar provided training on existing BanEcuador credit lines and the procedure for refinancing debts given the producers’ new economic reality in the context of COVID-19. This will allow producers to approach a financial institution with updated information for both current and future credit operations.

During subsequent months, workshops on strengthening the technical capacities of financial institutions, organizations, SRI staff and Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock and Ministry Environment and Water technicians were held on topics such as environmental and social analysis systems, sustainable finance regulations in Ecuador, international standards on sustainable financing, tax incentives and credit lines that promote the transition towards sustainable, deforestation-free production.