Malaysia is a bright spot of development in Southeast Asia. With a GDP growth rate of 5.9 per cent in 2017, the country has one of the fastest-growing economies in Asia.
But development does not have to come at the expense of sustainability, and this is the message that the country’s stock exchange, Bursa Malaysia, wants to communicate to its listed companies.
In 2015, the institution launched a new Sustainability Framework, along with a Sustainability Reporting Guide and Toolkit, to improve businesses’ transparency on environmental, social and corporate governance-related issues. This adds on to the exchange’s previous Listing Requirements released in 2007, where companies were only required to report on their corporate social responsibility initiatives (CSR).
Today, CSR is no longer enough. Investors are increasingly focused on sustainable business strategies and pushing businesses to integrate sustainability into their core business strategy. Here’s what two Bursa-listed companies are doing when it comes to sustainability.
