Simplifying and Facilitating Green Trade Finance through Digitalisation

SINGAPORE, June 28, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- SGTraDex today announced the successful completion of pilot green trade finance transactions in the built environment sector with the seamless and trusted exchange of green data and certification through SGTraDex, and the expansion of its green trade financing capabilities by bringing commercial and green data onto a single platform. With the successful pilot, the benefits provided by SGTraDex as a reliable and secure data highway can be extended to other industries, by eliminating the need for bilateral connection between parties, improving traceability and unlocking new efficiencies and opportunities.

Enabling a digital and traceable workflow

A UOB-led consortium of banks including DBS, OCBC and Standard Chartered, supported by the Building and Construction Authority (BCA), Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and JTC, sought to reduce the friction to accessing green data and credentials in the built environment ecosystem for evaluating Green and Sustainable Trade Finance, especially during the construction stage. The ecosystem partners brought together commercial documents and ESG data required for Green and Sustainable Trade finance to enable a digital and traceable workflow through platform providers such as Doxa Connex, eliminating existing friction in the financing process.

During the pilot which ran from 23rd May to 7th June 2023, two sets of transactions were facilitated through SGTraDex:

UOB was able to rely on data from ESGpedia to obtain the green certification data for the new Punggol Campus of Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT). By leveraging on traceability from digital document exchange, UOB was able to avail green and sustainable trade finance to APP Engineering Pte Ltd, a sub-contractor to Kimly Construction Pte Ltd, main contractor for SIT's Punggol Campus Plot 2.

OCBC Bank has also completed its first data exchange transaction on SGTraDex with a home-grown construction and civil engineering company, the main contractor of an industrial project by JTC. Under the transaction, the Bank successfully verified through SGTraDex the project's Green Mark certification.

Key stakeholders expanding the use cases to support wider industry adoption

Following the successful pilot, the industry partners comprising Doxa Connex and ESGpedia, the consortium of banks — DBS, OCBC, Standard Chartered and UOB, and the public sector including BCA, MAS and JTC, will support wider adoption to facilitate green trade financing. 

SGTraDex acts as a data highway for commercial and ESG related data to converge, enabling ecosystem players to access all data required through one touch point.

BCA enables data availability from its Super Low Energy Building (SLEB) Smart Hub system as well as through the ESG Registry under MAS' Project Greenprint. SLEB Smart Hub is a comprehensive digital platform that incorporates a range of databases and digital tools to promote energy efficiency and encourage energy savings in the building environment, in support of the Singapore Green Building Masterplan.

When building developers and owners apply for Green Mark certification, they can now consent to share pertinent data with financial institutions, thus facilitating and strengthening green financing efforts. All building developers and owners in Singapore are encouraged to share their sustainability data through the SLEB Smart Hub to support the green financing eco-system for buildings. With this data, building developers and owners can benchmark their building's energy performance against industry peers. The comparison of key performance indicators like air-conditioning efficiency with other buildings helps to identify potential areas to improve energy efficiency. Large developers in Singapore including JTC, HDB have shared their sustainability data via SLEB Smart Hub to benefit their contractor and supplier ecosystem.

ESG Registry, part of MAS' Project Greenprint, and powered by STACS' ESGpedia, is a ESG data and technology registry for multiple industries. For the built environment sector, ESGpedia has amalgamated project certification and green material certification data across green certificate issuers to facilitate green financing. MAS' Project Greenprint is a collection of initiatives that aims to harness technology and data to enable a more transparent, trusted and efficient ESG ecosystem to enable green and sustainable finance. Please refer to MAS' media release on Project Greenprint.

UOB, DBS, OCBC and Standard Chartered will leverage data including commercial and ESG related data to avail green financing to a wider pool of suppliers and contractors seamlessly.

Doxa is a procurement platform that facilitates the digital exchange of documents between buyers and suppliers. It focuses on simplifying complex workflows for companies in the construction industry to optimise efficiency. Leveraging the data from Doxa, ecosystem players can establish traceability of transactions back to qualified green projects.

A more transparent and efficient process will help businesses advance their green initiatives and strengthen their supply chain resilience. This will help boost the sustainability of Singapore's supply chains and establish the country as a green trade finance hub.

Notes to editor:

About SGTraDex

Launched on 1 June 2022, the Singapore Trade Data Exchange (SGTraDex) is a digital utility that facilitates the sharing of data between supply chain ecosystem partners, streamlining information flows through a common data highway where data can be shared in a trusted, secure and inclusive manner.

SGTraDex uses proprietary technology anchored through a public-private partnership model to resolve pain points in supply chain ecosystems including a heavy reliance on a paper-based system which lacks efficiency, transparency and sustainability. The move to digitise information will increase productivity and build supply chain resilience. New efficiencies and opportunities will be unlocked when ecosystem partners can collaborate to achieve a shared visibility of the end-to-end supply chain. For more information, visit sgtradex.com

https://sgtradex.com/files/GSTF%20Pilot%20Press%20Release%20-%20Quote%20Sheet_FINAL_27%20June.pdf

SOURCE Singapore Trade Data Exchange Services Pte. Ltd.