Report on Green Financing & Socially Responsible Investment

Japan's Ministry of the Environment published a comparative survey on Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) in Japan, the U.S. and the U.K. in June 2003. A total of 1,670 valid responses were collected from individual investors in Japan through an online survey. For corporate investors, the Ministry conducted interviews and collected responses through written questionnaires.

As of March 2003, nine companies in Japan have introduced environmentally friendly financial products or "Eco-funds," funds created through a screening process based on corporate environmental efforts. The report studies and analyzes general recognition and awareness of these products as well as attributes of eco-fund-oriented investors.

The survey's results reveal a lower rate of environmentally friendly financial product purchase in Japan, due to a lack of information about such products, despite a high level of interest about SRI among individual Japanese investors.

Corporate investors possess more than 80 percent of all stocks, and thus play a larger role in the Japanese stock market than individual investors. However, socially responsible investment by corporate investors is found only in the context of investment trust companies that set up and manage funds for individual investors. Also, such investments are limited to companies that have undergone a positive screening, which evaluates environmentally favorable activities, although negative screening, which excludes companies engaged in environmentally unfavorable activities, has also been adopted in the other countries. Moreover, different activities are screened than in the U.S. and the U.K.



Posted: 2003/07/25 10:32:35 AM
Japanese version