⇒ Bombay Stock Exchange’s India International Exchange (India INX) listed Indian Railway Finance Corporation’s (IRFC’s) Green bonds.
- A Green bond is like any other regular bond but with one key difference: the money raised by the issuer are earmarked towards financing `green’ projects, i.e. assets or business activities that are environment-friendly. Such projects could be in the areas of renewable energy , clean transportation and sustainable water management.
- Launched in- 2007
- First bank to come out with a issue – YES Bank.
⇒ China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) will issue its first US dollar-denominated bond .
- Minimum size of issuance – 1 billion USD
- Bond Maturity -> 3 – 5 years
⇒ Government launched Savings Bonds.
- Bonds will be issued in multiples of INR 1000 (face value).
- Interest on the Bonds will be taxable under Income-tax Act 1961.
- Bonds will be exempt from Wealth-tax under Wealth Tax Act 1957.
- Bonds will have a maturity of 7 years carrying interest at 7.75% per annum payable half- yearly (cumulative value of 1000 at end of 7 years will be 1703).
⇒ Indiabulls Housing Finance raised INR 1000 crores by selling India’s first Social Bonds.
- Debt instruments issued to raise funds which is to be deployed in financing/re-financing eligible social projects such as affordable housing, water supply, sanitation, transport etc
- sole investor -Yes Bank
- Maturity-5 year
⇒ Government notified terms of Scheme of Electoral Bonds to curb flow of illegal money into political activities
- With issuance of electoral bonds, donors can purchase electoral bonds from specific State Bank of India (SBI) branches, and receiving political parties can encash them only through a designated bank account.
- Electoral bonds will be available at specified SBI branches for 10 days each in the months of January, April, July and October.
- Electoral Bond shall be a bearer instrument in the nature of a Promissory Note (P-notes) and an interest-free banking instrument. Any Donor can buy bonds of any amount among INR 1000 / 10000 / 100000 / 1000000 and 10000000.
- Electoral bonds will not carry the name of payee or buyerm and will have a life of only 15 days during which it can be used for making a donation to political parties.
- To receive the electoral bonds, Political party must have secured over 1% of the votes polled in last general elections.
⇒ Britain’s Prince Charles launched a new 10-million-dollar Development Impact Bond (DIB).
- are a performance-based investment instrument intended to finance development programmes in low resource countries, which are built off the model of social impact bond (SIB) model.
- first social impact bond was originated by Social Finance UK in 2010.
