Harnessing Social Bonds For Sustainable Finance: A Focus On Challenges And Prospects In The Sultanate Of Oman

In the modern business era where the financial services integrate environmental, social, andgovernance (ESG) models and investment decisions influence sustainability, social bonds are arecent emerging financial tool. A financial instrument that allows private funders to upfront capitalfor public ventures that deliver societal and environmental outcomes. As a twig of green bond andsustainable category, social bonds are proving their separate nature of equal viability in terms ofboth issuers and investors. Despite being recently developed categories; social bonds haveexperienced a noteworthy track in the international financial markets. Oman recently has strategiesof sustainability and weighs legislative plans to enable issuance of green, blue, and social bonds.As a part of the country’s incessant growth efforts to improve and expand the capital market, thesefundraising tools are being issued to meet the issuers and investors’ needs. While still in itsdevelopmental years and a late entry to the capital market, a few social bond draft regulations havealready been set up in the Sultanate of Oman. Hence, this paper attempts to present some relatedconcepts of social bonds and their international experiences of growth in the initial years globally.Also tries to present the opportunities and challenges of social bond mechanism and issue processin the Sultanate of Oman.