"In the CNB, we have limited knowledge of the importance of green loans in the Croatian banking system based on data for three systemically important banks that participated in our survey. From these limited data, it can be estimated that the share of green loans in total loans is very small, only 3-4 percent. I see the reasons for such a small share of green loans both on the supply side and on the demand side for such loans. The function of banks and all other market actors is to raise awareness of environmental business risks and to point out the importance of green investments. In addition, I think it is somewhat outdated to talk about green loans because today all investments should be as sustainable as possible. It is obvious that there is still a lot of space for educating society and raising awareness of environmental and other risks", said Sandra Švaljek, Deputy Governor, participating in the panel discussion "Financing and reporting in sustainability", held as part of the 4th International Conference "Support Sustainable 2023 - Cooperation and new technologies for sustainability" of the Croatian Chamber of Economy. 

She pointed out that the Croatian National Bank issued supervisory expectations for risk management identification for less significant credit institutions that were published in 2021 and that it assesses whether banks take sufficient account of risks in their portfolio.

"In addition to being at a time of climate change, we, as recently announced by the Stockholm Resilience Centre, are also at a time when humanity has surpassed six of the nine planetary boundaries. This means that we can no longer just concentrate on climate and climate change, as this is just one planetary boundary, and now we have exceeded five new ones – biodiversity, land use, availability of drinking water, biosphere integrity, and new entities such as microplastics, pesticides and nuclear waste. Now it is only a matter of time before we find ourselves in an environment that will look nothing like what we are used to. This situation sets the task before both us and the Government, as well as before other regulators, to contribute through our activities to faster changes in the economy and strengthening resilience to environmental risks", emphasized the Deputy Governor.