Rewarding transparency

ACCA Sustainability reporting awards on March 25:

The judges have finalised the winners for the ACCA Sri Lanka Sustainability Reporting Awards 2008 to be held for the fifth consecutive year.

The high profile event which showcases the importance of sustainability reporting within corporates built on the global criteria pertaining to the GRI guidelines and based on the concept of triple bottom line reporting will be held on March 25 at the Cinnamon Grand. The Chief Guest will be Minister of Export Development and International Trade Prof. G L Peiris and the Guest of Honour will be former Chairman of Sri Lanka Tourism and sustainable development advocate Renton de Alwis.

Last year's awards saw Holcim Lanka win the large category award while Union Assurance won the medium category award. Commendation awards were also presented to Ceylon Tobacco Company for continuous and consistent focus on sustainability and Sampath Bank for innovative projects clearly integrating sustainability principles.

The awards, that are global initiative and is based on judging guidelines established by ACCA worldwide, is currently held in over 25 countries and is open to any type of organisation encompassing all business sizes. Comprehensiveness, credibility and communication, identifying and rewarding innovative attempts to communicate corporate performance, which are all aligned to the sustainability concept are a part of the marking scheme and according to ACCA Sri Lanka President, Nandika Buddhipala, it is notable that companies in Sri Lanka now consider sustainability reporting a part of their everyday workings.

"Proper sustainability reporting is challenging at the best of times, as while it does implement and establish uniform accountable and transparent guidelines on how economic, social and environmental impacts of an organisation should be reported, it also means that employees from top to bottom, must be made conscious of these reporting procedures.

While most multinational companies around the world consider sustainability reporting as a responsibility towards their stakeholders, what we find most exciting in Sri Lanka is the fact that we have an increasing number of Sri Lankan based companies that are entering and winning the awards. This is truly admirable and an assurance that local companies are permeating global best practices into their corporate DNA", Nandika said.

The ACCA Sustainability Reporting Awards are already functional in Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Ireland, Malaysia, New Zealand, Pakistan, Singapore, South Africa, Sri Lanka, the UK and the USA with similar awards, largely based on the ACCA criteria, existing in Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.