Focus is on helping garment factories access finance for environmentally sustainable and energy saving improvements

Myanmar’s garment industry has been growing an annual rate of over 25% year-on-year since 2012. Such growth has brought with it hundreds of thousands of new jobs in the industry and new product technologies and manufacturing processes. The economic development benefits for the country are immense, but so too are the new environmental management challenges presented by such rapid industrial growth. Activities such as acid washing, digital printing, laser etching, and in general a substantially increased carbon footprint from industrial growth require best practice solutions for improved production efficiency, energy, water & waste management.

SMART Myanmar, a project implemented by sequa in cooperation with the Myanmar Garment Manufacturers Association (MGMA), the Foreign Trade Association of German Retailers (AVE) and consortium partner the Association of Development Financing Institutions in Asia and the Pacific (ADFIAP) has been working with garment factories and banks to generate practical and bankable solutions to the industry’s growing environmental management challenges.

The objective of the MoU between the SMART Myanmar project and AYA Bank is to jointly identify and pilot bankable green projects within 2019, to inspire and guide more substantial green lending programs in the years to come. As an EU funded project working with hundreds of garment factories on technical consultancy, the SMART Myanmar project is well positioned to scope potential green projects for AYA Bank and advise loan managers in piloting new green lending services. As the fastest growing bank in the country, AYA Bank is well positioned to effectively deploy such new services, and to quickly scale-up successful approaches.

“We must support a green & verdant environment with our business activities. Green finance is a new focus for us and one in which we are excited to work,” said U Myint Zaw, Managing Director, of AYA Bank, currently the fastest growing private sector bank in Myanmar.

Mr. Octavio B. Peralta, Secretary General of the Manila-based, 106 member-bank, 39- country, Association of Development Financing Institutions in Asia and the Pacific (ADFIAP) said of the MoU, “SMART Myanmar’s collaboration with AYA Bank on green banking is a big opportunity to boost access to finance for green projects of small and medium enterprises in the garment and other industry sectors that are blazing the trail toward sustainable business.”