Policy Recommendations

Plenary 1.5: Alternative Finance Strategy- Closing the Fiscal Gap for Sustainable Development
1: To mobilize private capital and address Pakistan's fiscal and development gaps, we propose a strategic policy framework centered on four key actions: 

  • Introduce Portfolio Targets: Consider setting gradual, mandatory targets for financial institutions to allocate a portion of their portfolios to projects verified under national green and social taxonomies, creating scalable demand for impact assets.
  • Offer Capital Incentives: Explore assigning lower regulatory risk weights to taxonomy-aligned loans, making sustainable lending more capital-efficient and attractive for banks.
  • Formalize National Taxonomies: Prioritize the official launch of the Pakistan Green Taxonomy and the development of a Social Outcomes Taxonomy to standardize definitions, prevent greenwashing, and guide investments.
  • Enhance Transparency: Implement mandatory, public impact reporting for all publicly supported projects to build a national performance database, close the data gap, and ensure accountability. 

2: Opportunities of Blended Finance to underwrite SDG related investment must be actively explored. For example, in Bangladesh mobile transfer platforms such as Bkash has benefitted from cash infusion by philanthropic organization (Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation).
3: Introduce an outcomes-linked window within development plans to ensure that a portion of development spending is tied to measurable social results rather than inputs and activities.
4: Establish a national platform that pools government, donor, and private capital to finance programs based on verified outcomes. This will enhance alignment, reduce fragmentation, and attract new forms of catalytic investment.
5: Embed results-based incentives in fiscal transfers to provinces, rewarding measurable progress in education, health, and employment outcomes
6: Bring in SMEs in climate finance, as well as individuals.
7: Develop such bankable projects and programmes, which are long-term having consistent finacing, by institutionalizing them.
8: Define what qualifies as Tax Credit for CSR activities as per social impact financing framework, or other development outcomes framework, to ensure it is not being entirely spent on marketing.
9: The development sector, academia and private sector need to collectively develop such bankable projects which align with three pillars/outcomes of the Social Impact Financing framework: reducing stunting and malnutrition, learning poverty and climate security.