FIRMS said sustainability reporting helps their companies address both the positive and the negative impacts of their businesses.
In the first two installments of the virtual Climate Investment Forum on Monday and Tuesday, listed conglomerates said they refer to available international frameworks as well as form their own reporting system for nonfinan-cial disclosures.
“We had seen that disclosing all of our positive and negative impact, actually [made us] more cognizant of the issues,” Ma. Victoria A. Tan, executive director of group risk management and sustainability at Ayala Corp., said on Monday.
“You have that responsibility to make sure that the negative impact will be addressed [as] part of risk management, [while for] the positive impact, you can amplify because it actually serves as an encouragement for others to follow,” she added.
For its part, the country’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued Memorandum Circular No. 4, series of 2019 or the Sustainability Reporting Guidelines for Publicly Listed Companies (PLCs), which adopts a com-ply-or-explain approach.
The regulator said it is their “effort to drive publicly listed companies towards adopting a more sustainable approach in their corporate ventures.”
The guidelines provide a reporting template and PLCs are also allowed to use internationally recognized sustainability frameworks, which firms can choose depending on their goals and what they want to measure.
Metro Pacific Investments Corp. (MPIC) said the country still needs to simplify reporting frameworks for firms.
“We have to be able to fortify but simplify our frameworks and the disclosure requirements and make it relevant to what they do, and corollary to that would be assurance,” June Cheryl Cabal-Revilla, chief finance, sustainability, and risk officer at MPIC, said on Tuesday.
“Assurance would provide the discipline for accurate, fair reporting, and proper monitoring of performance and targets,” she said.
Both MPIC and SM Investments Corp. (SMIC) said sustainability reporting has to be “personal” to firms and it should be something that is done beyond compliance.
“Reporting is not the same thing as action. Reporting could really help because reporting gives you transparency as to what’s going on, it makes it hard to hide,” Timothy Daniels, consultant and head of investor relations and sustainability at SMIC said on Tuesday.
“If you do it right, it can make it very clear to you what is the priority… or what are the real risks of your business,” he added.
However, amid calls to expand sustainability reporting even for micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs), reporting for smaller firms should have their own criteria that still meet the same objectives.
“There has to be a bit of a different set of criteria for SMEs as compared to PLCs, definitely, in terms of the scope, in terms of the context,” said Marla G. Alvarez, vice-president for sustainability at SM-led BDO Unibank, Inc. on Monday. — Keren Concepcion G. Valmonte
