Thirteen companies, including seven listed firms, have published Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) sustainability reports.
The companies released their reports at a Zoom platform meeting held on Monday and exchanged their experiences in this regard, according to a DSE press release issued on Tuesday.
The companies are: Envoy Textile, GPH Ispat, BRAC Bank, Standard Bank, Shahjalal Islami Bank, Jamuna Bank, LankaBangla Finance, Blue Planet Group, Pacific Jeans Group, New Age Group, Bitopi Group, FloWater Solutions Ltd and FloWater Solar Ltd.
Earlier in May 2018, GRI signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) to provide training to local stakeholders so that listed companies follow the standards of sustainability reporting.
GRI is an independent international organisation that has pioneered sustainability reporting since 1997. GRI is the international, non-profit organisation that provides the world’s most widely used sustainability reporting standards.
In the South Asia region, companies are increasingly using the GRI Standards to disclose their impacts.
GRI is working in Bangladesh with a partnership with the Dhaka Stock Exchange to enhance corporate transparency in the country.
Abdur Razzak, deputy general manager of DSE Training Academy, said the collaborative initiative of GRI-DSE has been started since 2018.
DSE had earlier published the “Sustainable Reporting Guidelines for listed companies” on its website in 2019.
He said DSE and GRI have already conducted numerous workshops and technical workshops under collaborative initiatives where senior executives of listed companies participated.
Dr. Mrs Aditi Haldar, director of GRI South Asia, said GRI has a footprint in more than 100 countries to support GRI Standard’s ESG (environmental, social and governance) reporting in a more effective and smart way.
Among the countries, Bangladesh is an important one for GRI, which will help it to become a developed country to support its quality growth and development.
“We are facilitating the education, development and publication of Sustainability Reports for reporting countries and those who want to be a part of the business community and building relationships with domestic and international stakeholders,” she said.
Golam Kibria of IOTA said it took eight months of work with 13 Bangladeshi companies to publish the Sustainability Reporting, starting with the plan.
The European CMRD has taken an initiative to make Sustainable Reporting mandatory for those companies with more than 250 employees and a turnover of more than US$ 40 million. And big companies need to do this to keep the business afloat.
Meanwhile, DSE and GRI jointly organized a number of technical series in 2021 to make Bangladeshi companies aware and interested in the GRI based Sustainability Report. By acquiring knowledge from those technical series, 13 companies have prepared sustainable reports based on GRI.
In this regard, IOTA, a local consulting firm certified by GRI, has provided in-house technical assistance to the companies to draft a report based on the GRI standard.
