Message from Chairman Professional Accountants in Business Committee - IFAC

The recent financial and economic crisis has put into focus many policy, governance, and business reporting issues that need to be addressed if we are to facilitate sustainable organisational success.
The trend toward disclosing environment, social, and governance (ESG) performance information has been driven by a widespread recognition that these factors are critical to driving long-term stakeholder value creation, and therefore will be an important driver of stakeholder trust and confidence in an organisation. The continuous challenge for organisations is to provide the right mix of relevant, reliable, and understandable information based on the needs of their various stakeholders, including investors and funders, as well as customers, employees. Reporting relevant sustainability or ESG issues is necessary to provide investors and other stakeholders with useful information highlighting sustainability impacts and performance, risks, and opportunities.
A key challenge is that, although disclosures of non-financial information have increased, the analysis of what that information actually means for the organisation, and its strategy, is often insufficient. A more integrated and holistic business reporting framework, as being developed by the International Integrated Reporting Committee, will hopefully be capable of consolidating the various non-financial aspects of overall performance, and therefore enable users of business reports to better assess what is driving future results.
Developing a reporting strategy involves ensuring that various stakeholders and users receive the information they require in the form that they require it. Innovative organisations are providing information in various ways that is targeted to specific users, including using the Internet and social media. Electronic disclosures and web-based reporting of both financial and non-financial information is increasingly becoming the norm rather than the exception. The evolution of the Internet and Web 2.0 technologies and various social media tools (eg, wikis, blogs, podcasts, and forums) helps organisations to adopt more effective means of communicating to stakeholders.
Effective stakeholder engagement and communicating directly, including on the importance of material ESG factors to an organisation, requires effectively written reports as well as more direct forms of interaction with investors and stakeholders. One-to-one meetings or forums involving a collection of investors and/or other stakeholders are also important ways to communicate performance. Such communication channels help organisations to proactively influence the mindset of investors and other stakeholders so they recognise how ESG factors may impact the organization's long-term performance.
Awards are an important mechanism for acknowledging and publicising best practice in business reporting, and particularly on how environmental, social, and governance performance can be effectively disclosed by organisations. The Best Corporate Report and Sustainability Report Awards provide leadership, ideas and inspiration to other organisations that recognise and have set out to improve the way they report to their stakeholders.
I congratulate the Joint Committee of Institute of Cost and Management Accountants of Pakistan and the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Pakistan for organising these awards, and providing us all with useful insights into high quality business reporting in Pakistan.