The Asian Development Bank (ADB) issued the second gender bond in Kazakhstan. For these purposes, the financial organization attracted 14 billion tenge, or about US$32 million. Gender bonds are fixed income securities that finance exclusively those projects that support women's empowerment. These include projects that enable women’s access to finance, financial literacy, education and more. The funds are used within the Gender Equality in Housing Finance project. This will expand the lending operations of the Otbasy Bank and therefore provide the female residents of Kazakhstan with affordable mortgages. This will particularly affect women living in the rural regions of the country.
“But the intention from this program was for ADB to reach more than 3000 eligible women and provide them with long term affordable mortgage financing, of which we were targeting to reach 60% to women in rural areas, and at least 20% to low income women borrowers. So that the fact that Otbasy bank has come back to us after one year and asked to withdraw a larger amount than the first disbursement, encourages us that the project is going well. And indeed, there may be a third gender bond from ADB in future, as in when investors would like to subscribe to such a bond, and also when the borrower is ready to take further amounts,” said Assistant Treasurer at ADB Jonathan Grosvenor.
In total, the ADB issued more than US$3.2 billion in thematic bonds to support projects not only in the field of gender equality, but also in the areas of education, health and water resources. According to ADB Assistant Treasurer Jonathan Grosvenor, investors are increasingly putting their money into solving environmental and social problems.
Translation by Assem Zhanmukhanova
Editing by Galiya Khassenkhanova
