• Wednesday, Mar 29, 2023
  • Last Update : 10:24 am

Norway excludes India's BHEL over Rampal power plant

  • Published at 02:34 am May 6th, 2017
  • Last updated at 09:47 am May 6th, 2017
Norway excludes India's BHEL over Rampal power plant
Norway's wealth fund has excluded Bharat Heavy Electricals from its investment portfolio because of concerns over the environmental impact of a plant the Indian company is building, the Norwegian central bank said on Friday. The $935 billion Norwegian fund, the world's largest, is not allowed to invest in companies that breach certain ethical guidelines set by the Norwegian Parliament. These include producing nuclear weapons, tobacco or anti-personnel landmines. BHEL, an engineering and manufacturing company that is majority-owned by the government of India, did not reply to requests for comment. It's stock was excluded from the Norwegian fund's portfolio because of "the risk of severe environmental damage" resulting from the building of a coal-fired power plant close to the Sundarbans, the world's largest mangrove forest, in Bangladesh, the fund's ethics watchdog said in a statement. This is an area with "universally unique environmental qualities" the Council on Ethics said, adding that "there is an unacceptable risk of the company contributing to or being responsible for severe environmental damage". The Council on Ethics makes recommendations to the board of the central bank, which then decides whether to follow them through and instructs the fund's management to take action. The fund is managed by a unit of the central bank. The watchdog said that BHEL "did not reply to the Council's inquiries initially, but has later submitted comments to a draft recommendation, stating that there is no need to dredge the waterways" through which ships will access the plant. The fund has sold all its holdings in BHEL, which it did ahead of the publication of the decision. The fund did so gradually so as not to alert market participants.
50
Facebook 50
blogger sharing button blogger
buffer sharing button buffer
diaspora sharing button diaspora
digg sharing button digg
douban sharing button douban
email sharing button email
evernote sharing button evernote
flipboard sharing button flipboard
pocket sharing button getpocket
github sharing button github
gmail sharing button gmail
googlebookmarks sharing button googlebookmarks
hackernews sharing button hackernews
instapaper sharing button instapaper
line sharing button line
linkedin sharing button linkedin
livejournal sharing button livejournal
mailru sharing button mailru
medium sharing button medium
meneame sharing button meneame
messenger sharing button messenger
odnoklassniki sharing button odnoklassniki
pinterest sharing button pinterest
print sharing button print
qzone sharing button qzone
reddit sharing button reddit
refind sharing button refind
renren sharing button renren
skype sharing button skype
snapchat sharing button snapchat
surfingbird sharing button surfingbird
telegram sharing button telegram
tumblr sharing button tumblr
twitter sharing button twitter
vk sharing button vk
wechat sharing button wechat
weibo sharing button weibo
whatsapp sharing button whatsapp
wordpress sharing button wordpress
xing sharing button xing
yahoomail sharing button yahoomail