Singapore Secures $510 Million to fund Green Projects

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has announced that the Green Investments Partnership (GIP), a blended finance partnership under Singapore’s Financing Asia’s Transition Partnership (FAST-P) initiative, has achieved its first close with $510 million of committed capital from global and regional private, public and philanthropic institutions.

The capital will be deployed into green and sustainable infrastructure opportunities in Southeast and South Asia across a strong pipeline of transactions, MAS said on Monday.

MAS is part of the group of investors and financiers which include the Australian Government represented by Export Finance Australia, International Finance Corporation, the Dutch Entrepreneurial Development Bank (FMO), HSBC, Temasek, British International Investment, Bank of the Philippine Islands and Allied Climate Partners. The European Commission is supporting GIP under its Global Gateway programme.

Pentagreen Capital, the sustainable infrastructure debt financing platform established by HSBC and Temasek, serves as the fund manager for GIP. GIP will support investments in renewable energy and storage, electric vehicle infrastructure, sustainable transport, water and waste management and other sectors critical to Southeast and South Asia’s energy transition.

Launched by MAS in 2023, FAST-P brings together public, private and philanthropic capital to help finance Asia’s green transition. GIP is the first fund under the FAST-P initiative to achieve first close, with concessional and commercial capital provided by a diverse group of partners including governments, multilateral development financial institutions and philanthropies, as well as private investors, banks, and other financial institutions.

It will deploy debt financing for climate-related, marginally bankable sustainable infrastructure in Southeast and South Asia, MAS said.

FAST-P’s GIP and its two other partnerships – Industrial Transformation infrastructure debt programme (ITP) and the Energy Transition Acceleration Finance partnership (ETAF) – were conceived to address the region’s pressing climate finance gap by using innovative blended and tiered capital structures to crowd in capital at scale.

By de-risking infrastructure investments in Southeast and South Asia for international investors and financiers, FAST-P aims to unlock capital for innovative and marginally bankable infrastructure situations that have traditionally struggled to attract financing due to perceived risks, with gaps that are more acute in the project development and construction phases.

Important Milestone

Gillian Tan, Assistant Managing Director (Development & International) and Chief Sustainability Officer of MAS said that the first close of the GIP is an important milestone for FAST-P.

He said that Pentagreen has brought together a diverse group of partners, which are participating across the different commercial and concessional tranches of the capital structure to de-risk and finance marginally bankable green infrastructure projects in the region.

MAS welcomes participation by a broader community of partners in FAST-P to mobilise and scale blended finance for Asia’s transition, he added.

FAST-P Office CEO Munib Madni congratulated all their partners, who have come together to achieve this milestone, and extended heartfelt gratitude for their commitment.

“The FAST-P Office looks forward to continuing the work with Pentagreen, our partners in other pillars, and the broader ecosystem of commercial and concessional investors, to promote blended finance solutions for sustainable infrastructure in the region,” Madni added.