The International Capital Market Association (ICMA) today welcomes the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA)’s announcement of a successful offering of digital green bonds implementing ICMA’s Bond Data Taxonomy.

The digital green bonds issued by the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China (the HKSAR Government) on 7 February 2024 marks the first adoption of ICMA’s Bond Data Taxonomy (BDT) by a sovereign, supranational and agency (SSA) issuer. This is also a first for a green bond.

Promoting market efficiency and avoiding the risk of fragmentation are key objectives of ICMA’s Bond Data Taxonomy. The BDT is a standardised and machine-readable language of key economic terms of a bond (such as amounts, currency, maturity, interest), key dates (such as pricing, settlement) as well as other relevant information (such as governing law, relevant parties, ratings, selling restrictions) typically included within a term sheet. Where relevant, the BDT incorporates existing ISO data definitions and formats.

A key feature of the BDT is that it is technology agnostic and can be used both for traditional securities and digital, i.e. distributed ledger technology (DLT) based debt instruments. The adoption of the BDT by the HKSAR Government in its digital green bond issuance paves the way for streamlining operational processes where bond information is stored and exchanged between different parties not only at issuance, but also during the bond’s lifecycle.

''The issuance by the HKSAR Government of digital green bonds in alignment with ICMA’s Bond Data Taxonomy marks a significant milestone to foster interoperability and facilitate scalability of DLT-based bond markets. It is also further testament to the HKSAR Government's position as a leader in capital markets development”, said ICMA Chief Executive Bryan Pascoe.

“The HKSAR Government's second digital bond issuance has made multiple innovations, including the alignment with ICMA's Bond Data Taxonomy which marks an important step in promoting automation and interoperability in capital market processes. We look forward to our continued collaboration with ICMA to enhance transparency and efficiency in markets”, said HKMA Deputy Chief Executive, Darryl Chan.

Further information on ICMA’s Bond Data Taxonomy, which is publicly available, can be found here.  

For reference:
HKMA press release on the HKSAR Government’s second digital green bond issuance – 7 February 2024