Abstract

Green banking or sustainable banking is one of the issues of the concern of all stakeholders of the world. Following this concern, this study has investigated the status of green banking practices of the non-bank financial institutions (NBFIs) and commercial banks of Bangladesh. Analyzing the contents of annual reports as well as websites of banks and NBFIs, the study finds that 44 out of 57 banks and 13 out of 33 NBFIs, to a varying degree, have exposures in direct or indirect green financing. But only 45 banks and 25 NBFIs conducted environmental risk rating. Most of the banks and NBFIs practice green banking only in a limited scale and volume and disclose green banking information in a semi structured manner in both the annual reports and corporate websites. However, except one, all the 56 scheduled banks and all the 33 non-bank financial institutions (NBFIs) have their own green banking policy guidelines. They also have green office guide for conducting in-house green activities. The study finds that green banking disclosures in their annual reports exceed that in their websites. It is also found that both private commercial banks (PCBs), and foreign commercial banks (FCBs) have surpassed state-owned commercial banks (SCBs) and state-owned specialized development banks (SDBs) in terms of the green financing.

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