ADFIAP, represented by its Secretary General, Mr. Octavio B. Peralta, spoke before more than 60 delegates from the international development community as well as officials of the European Commission (EC) at a forum on “Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP) as a Vehicle for Green Growth” on February 7-8, 2012 in Brussels, Belgium. Mr. Peralta was invited by the EC to present the Association’s access to finance work and advocacy in bridging the gap of the need of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) for funding and the development finance institutions (DFIs) need for viable and sustainable projects. It has been noted in studies that access to finance is one of the critical elements in scaling up SCP-related projects. He also updated the delegates on the current status of the SMART Cebu project www.smartcebuproject.com/ of which ADFIAP is a partner together with the European Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines (ECCP) and sequa of Germany.

Under the auspices of the European Commission Directorate-General for Development and Cooperation and organized by the SWITCH-Asia Network Facility, the event discussed the achievements of the SWITCH-Asia Programme and lessons learned that may be applied to the design of future development and cooperation programmes in various regions of the world where themes related to “green economy” will have great importance. In addition, the forum also discussed how the achievements of SWITCH-Asia may be linked to the forthcoming Rio+20 summit on sustainable development https://www.uncsd2012.org/rio20/.

For more details of the Brussels forum, please visit the SWITCH-Asia Network Facility at https://www.switch-asia.eu/