Levi Strauss & Co is working with International Finance Corporation, a member of the World Bank Group, to provide financial incentives for garment suppliers in developing countries to upgrade environmental, health, safety and labor standards.

IFC’s Global Trade Supplier Finance program adopts tiered pricing of short-term financing for garment suppliers with lower costs for borrowers that score strong performance ratings under Levi’s environmental and social monitoring system. Specifically, the program will reward vendors that score higher on Levi’s Terms of Engagement assessments, which measure labor, health and safety, and environmental performance.

The GTSF program will offer these vendors lower cost rates on working capital financing. The higher the vendor’s TOE score, the more they will save.

IFC and Levi’s launched this initiative in partnership with GTNexus, a cloud-based business network and platform for global trade and supply chain management.