Billions Of Pounds In The Red, UK Budget To Have Greenish Hue

• British Finance Minister Rishi Sunak's annual budget on March 3 is set to have a green tinge, even as the country goes hundreds of billions of pounds into the red to fund its response to the coronavirus pandemic.
• Sunak will move forward with plans to launch Britain's first "green" government bonds - designed to finance environmentally-friendly investments - and might also nudge the Bank of England to focus more on climate change.
• But any progress on carbon taxes - endorsed by the International Monetary Fund in October - is likely to be slow as Sunak grapples with how best to close a 400-billion-pound ($556Bn) budget deficit, the largest since World War Two.
• Britain is hosting a major United Nations environmental summit, in November and Sunak told other finance ministers last week that he wanted action on climate change to be a major theme of Britain's chairmanship of the G7 this year.

(Source: Reuters)