The Finance Day was the first of the 11 Thematic Days of COP27. The day addressed several aspects of the climate finance ecosystem, including blended finance and innovative financial instruments, tools and policies to scale up and enhance access to climate finance, notably related to debt for environment swaps, and reducing the cost of green borrowing.

The day started with an opening speech by the Egyptian Prime Minister on the importance of cooperation between all stakeholders from the government, the private sector, and civil society, followed by a keynote by the host of the day, H.E. Dr. Mohamed Maait, The Egyptian Minister of Finance and by other high-level speeches on climate finance by the President of the World Bank, the Managing Director of the IMF, the UNDP Administrator, and the President of EBRD, among others. 

Throughout the Day, numerous speakers from government, international and regional financial institutions and private sector took part to the discussions on the Presidency stage. Minister Maait of Egypt highlighted, during the Day, the importance of reducing the cost of green borrowing to encourage and support developing countries towards their transition to green economies. Accordingly, two flagship initiatives were launched by the Ministry of Finance: the ‘Reducing the cost of Green Borrowing’ initiative as well as the ‘Sustainable Debt Coalition’ initiative, which aim at facilitating the access to affordable green finance for climate positive initiatives in the developing world. This is expected to be a major area of focus for Finance Ministers during the next year and to generate an astounding economic output. In addition, the Day witnessed the launch of a third initiative: the Sharm El Sheikh Guidebook for Just Financing, by the Egyptian ministry of Internal Cooperation, which is a framework aiming to accelerate flows of climate finance – in particular towards developing economies.

Highlights of the finance day also include the meeting of The Coalition of Finance Ministers for Climate Action, during which participants convened to discuss the role of Finance Ministers in climate action, as well as encouraging the development of economic policies and catalysing access to finance to facilitate the implementation of adaptation strategies. Another high point of the day was the “Voice of Africa” session, introduced by H.E. Dr. Hala El Said, Egyptian Minister of Planning and Economic development, that brought together long-term investors and private sector representatives to showcase how institutional investors approach investing in green projects. The session “Financing Adaptation” was marked by the intervention of H.E. Min. Fouad, who insisted on the importance of finding conjoint solutions between private and public sector and particularly blended finance mechanisms to enable the implementation of adaptation plans and policies. Several announcements on how the GFANZ is moving into implementation with a particular focus on capacity building, blended finance and reporting standards met applause in the room.

Another landmark of the Day was the launch of the report "Finance or Climate action: scaling up investment for climate and development" issued by the "Independent High-Level Expert Group on Scaling up Investment and Finance to Deliver on Climate Ambition and Development Goals" that was mandated by the COP26 and COP27 Presidencies to help develop and put forward policy options and recommendations to encourage and enable the