ACCA’s sustainability awards returns for 14th edition this year
KUCHING: The Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) has launched the 14th edition of its annual Malaysia Sustainability Reporting Awards ( MaSRA) as part of its effort to highlight the growing importance of sustainability reporting.
The prestigious awards provide both forward-thinking SMEs and larger corporates with the opportunity to showcase their sustainability best practices and reporting both in Malaysia and overseas.
“Internationally there are strong pressures pushing businesses to improve their sustainability practices and reporting. Indeed, sustainability reporting is being mandated by law in many countries.
“In Malaysia, sustainability reporting is currently not obligatory for all companies, but it does provide many helpful benefits to organisations.
It has been shown that strong sustainability reporting practices actually lead to improved operational efficiencies in the longer run, while the transparency of such reporting practices also makes organisations more attractive to investors, with conse- quent benefits to their valuation,” said Edward Ling, interim country head of ACCA Malaysia.
Edward added, “ACCA MaSRA serves to catalyse and enhance sustainability reporting amongst companies in Malaysia mainly PLCs.
“Since the mid-1990s, ACCA has regularly published research that guides and informs corporations on how to produce reports that provide greater transparency on their business performance. Enhancing corporate transparency is ultimately what the ACCA MaSRA is all about.
“Happily, there are many organisations in Malaysia that are moving in the right direction on this topic and MaSRA gives them a platform to highlight their best practices to audiences both in Malaysia and overseas.” Ling said last year, a number of high- quality submissions and winners were seen includingh Sime Darby Bhd, Maybank, Nets Printwork, Cenviro, Sunway, Fuji Xerox, Axiata and DiGi.com.
“We foresee a higher number of participation this year following Bursa Malaysia’s introduction of the new Sustainability Framework for Public Listed Companies mandating the inclusion of a sustainability statement with their Annual Report.”
This year’s awards include Best Overall Reporting, Best Sustainability Reporting for PLCs with market capitalisation less than RM2 billion, Best Sustainability Reporting for non-PLCs, Best Sustainability Reporting for SMEs, Best Workplace Practices and Commendation Awards.
The judging criteria are similar to last year’s which are in line with Bursa Malaysia’s Sustainability Guidelines and UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. MaSRA 2017 is open to companies from any sector, and there are no restrictions in terms of company size.