# What will SIDBI refuse to finance under its exclusion list?

Canonical: https://senseible.earth/answers/what-sidbi-will-not-finance-exclusion-list

SIDBI's exclusion list rules out illegal products, weapons, tobacco, spirits other than beer and wine, gambling, asbestos fibres, ozone-depleting substances, banned pesticides, child or forced labour, and coal mining or coal-fired power. It also excludes trading, storing or moving significant volumes of hazardous chemicals, or using them at commercial scale, and counts petrol and kerosene as hazardous.

## Products and activities

- Anything illegal under Indian law or international conventions; weapons and munitions.
- Alcoholic beverages other than beer and wine; tobacco; gambling and casinos.
- Wildlife trade regulated under CITES; radioactive materials; unbonded asbestos fibres; products containing PCBs.
- Pharmaceuticals, pesticides and ozone-depleting substances subject to international phase-outs or bans; persistent organic pollutants.
- Production, trade, storage or transport of significant volumes of hazardous chemicals, or their commercial scale use. The list names gasoline, kerosene and other petroleum products as hazardous chemicals.

## Energy and resources

- Prospecting, exploring or mining coal, transport infrastructure essentially used for coal, and power or heating plants essentially fired with coal.
- Oil from shale, tar sands or oil sands.
- Nuclear power plants, apart from measures that reduce hazards at existing assets.
- Logging in primary tropical moist forest, and wood not from sustainably managed forests.
- Waste trade across borders unless it complies with the Basel Convention.

## People and places

- Harmful or exploitative child labour, forced labour, and blocking workers from lawful association and collective bargaining.
- Projects needing land acquisition or causing displacement or loss of livelihoods.
- Projects affecting tribal or indigenous peoples without their documented consent.
- Projects in sensitive ecological areas or heritage sites; within 1 km of such an area, the required permissions must be obtained first.

## Where this applies

The list is SIDBI's organisation-wide exclusion list, reproduced in its environmental and social system for the GCF-backed FMAP programme. The hazardous chemicals line does not define significant volumes or commercial scale, so a fuel trading or storage business, or a plant burning large amounts of furnace oil or diesel, should ask SIDBI how it applies before preparing a full application.

## What Senseible does here

Senseible does not screen businesses for lender exclusions. It records the fuel and electricity a unit uses, which shows what a fuel-switch or efficiency project would change.

- [Bank ESG exclusion lists for MSME loans](https://senseible.earth/answers/bank-esg-exclusion-list-msme-loan)
- [SIDBI's due diligence checklist](https://senseible.earth/answers/sidbi-environmental-due-diligence-checklist)
- [SIDBI FMAP programme](https://senseible.earth/answers/sidbi-fmap-green-climate-fund-programme)

Sources: [SIDBI, ESMS for FMAP, Annexure 2: Exclusion List](https://www.sidbi.in/assets/front/pdf/ESMS-FMAP-E.pdf)

Last reviewed 2026-10-23.