India needs to resist efforts by some western ratings companies to push ESG norms on emerging markets even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is committed to zero out green house gas emissions by 2070, a key economic adviser said.
“The issue is not so much about the need for some norms, but about who will be monitoring these targets,” Sanjeev Sanyal, a member of PM Modi’s economic advisory council said in an interview. “The existing credit rating ones already have serious biases and failures. Allowing the emergence of a new bunch of exclusively western agencies to monitor ESG targets is problematic.”
India has been championing the issues important to emerging economies as it hosts the Group of 20 nations this year. In the first meeting of finance ministers and central bank heads in February, New Delhi took up the cause of debt relief for poorer nations, reforms in multilateral institutions and climate financing.
The South Asian nation needs to seek a review of the methodologies that international think tanks and global credit rating agencies employ, Sanyal said.
There have been concerns about how global rating agencies view India. Do you think there needs to be an overhaul of their systems?
Source : Bloomberg
