Publications

A Role for Finance Ministries

This paper investigates various roles that finance ministries can assume to promote those policies, regulations and standards which help to create a sustainable financial system. Finance ministries typically interact with the financial sector in many ways, from regulator and supervisory mandate setters to tax authority and sovereign debt issuers. All of these points of leverage empower them to play a key role in making financial systems sustainable.

Sustainability is not often regarded to be part of a finance ministry’s policy mandate. Therefore, this paper looks at cases where finance ministries use their mandates to bring about innovation in the space: Uganda, the Netherlands, the UK, South Africa, France and Germany. In conclusion, under the current mandates of finance ministries, much has already been done to begin creating significant openings that stimulate sustainability in the financial sector.