Swedbank in cooperation with UN-HABITAT

The question of sustainable urbanisation is one of the most pressing challenges facing the global community in the 21st century. UN-HABITAT is the UN agency for human settlements and is mandated by the UN General Assembly to promote socially and environmentally sustainable urbanisations and cities with the aim of providing adequate dwellings for all.

To be able to do this in the best possible way UN-HABITAT has several programmes designed to support decision makers and the local societies to find long term solutions. UN-HABITAT has also recently started a financial division as they have realised that financing is crucial to succeed in creating presumptions for new dwellings and infrastructure.

Swedbank, SIDA and KTH in common project
The agreement between Swedbank and UN-HABITAT, where SIDA is financially responsible, is a two year agreement with the possibility of extension. Swedbank will, together with their partner KTH/Centre for Bank and Finance (KTH/CEFIN), improve UN-HABITATs knowledge within the financial area with emphasis on housing and infrastructure financing. Further, the agreement means that there will be consultants available on the field of UN-HABITAT as requested. The person in charge at Swedbank is Enrique Rodriguez. The banks consultants, which together make up for a half-time post, are Project Managers Göran Henriksson and Stig Jonsson. The intention is that either of those will be posted in Nairobi, or in any other of UN-HABITATs programme countries, for 2-3 weeks every month.

Experts from all over the world at the ERSO-conference
On April 21-22 there was a conference held at Swedbanks head office in Stockholm for about 50 participants on one of UN-HABITATs experiment programmes, ERSO (Experimental Reimbursable Seeding Operations). ERSO is aiming at bringing the local banks to go further down the segments of income and at the same time having the micro-credit organisations to diversify upwards and give loans on longer terms than one year for house financing, to begin with for improvements on existing housing. The conference participants were financial experts from all over the world and the goal of the conference was to find guidelines for the continued work with the programmes. The opening speeches were held by the Chairman of the board of Swedbank, Carl-Erik Stålberg and the Deputy Executive Director of UN-HABITAT, Inga Björk-Klevby.

Inga Björk-Klevby finds events like the ERSO Conference to be an important part of UN-HABITATs work. Through the creation of a platform for financial experts from all over the world there will be opportunities for fresh ideas.