Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd (RFHL) has an­nounced it has achieved just over 67 per cent of its pledge to lend and in­vest US$200 mil­lion in cli­mate fi­nanc­ing by the year 2025.

The goal was ini­tial­ly set in 2021, fol­low­ing the group be­com­ing a sig­na­to­ry to the Unit­ed Na­tion’s Prin­ci­ples for Re­spon­si­ble Bank­ing (PRB) and the Net-Ze­ro Bank­ing Al­liance (NZ­BA), RFHL said in a state­ment yes­ter­day.

It said this progress means that the group has re­leased over US$134 mil­lion to date as it strives to meet its US$200 mil­lion tar­get.

Fund­ing un­der this goal con­tin­ues to be dis­bursed to in­di­vid­u­als and busi­ness­es un­der­tak­ing sus­tain­abil­i­ty projects across the group’s 16 sub­sidiaries with­in the Caribbean and Ghana.

Some of the sus­tain­abil­i­ty projects fo­cus on clean en­er­gy mar­itime trans­port, en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy, en­vi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion, elec­tric ve­hi­cles, green re­al es­tate, re­new­able en­er­gy, wa­ter man­age­ment, waste man­age­ment, and sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture.

RFHL added that re­new­able en­er­gy has been the most pop­u­lar cat­e­go­ry, gar­ner­ing over US$98 mil­lion in loans and in­vest­ments across the group.

This, it added, was fol­lowed by lend­ing and in­vest­ment of over US$15 mil­lion and US$9 mil­lion re­spec­tive­ly in the ar­eas of elec­tric ve­hi­cles and sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture.

To date, RFHL said Bar­ba­dos has been the lead­ing sub­sidiary, lend­ing over US$57 mil­lion, fol­lowed by T&T, where the bank has lent US$35.6 mil­lion to­wards the US$200 mil­lion goal.

Both Guyana and Ghana have made tremen­dous gains in the ar­eas of re­new­able en­er­gy and en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy, with lend­ings of US$17.6 mil­lion and US$13.5 mil­lion, re­spec­tive­ly.

Group pres­i­dent and CEO, Nigel Bap­tiste, ex­pressed sat­is­fac­tion, stat­ing, “RFHL was the first in­dige­nous fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion in the Caribbean to set such an am­bi­tious, cli­mate-fo­cused tar­get.

“This is just the be­gin­ning of the group’s sus­tain­abil­i­ty jour­ney and we re­main ful­ly com­mit­ted to un­lock­ing fi­nanc­ing to sup­port the at­tain­ment of the Unit­ed Na­tions Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goals, which ul­ti­mate­ly would lead to di­ver­si­fied economies and pros­per­i­ty for the ter­ri­to­ries in which we op­er­ate.”