ACCA Sustainability Awards showcase Corporate excellence in Reporting for the financial year 2018

The ACCA Sustainability Reporting Awards has felicitated Sri Lanka’s best sustainability reports for over 15 years. This year, Aitken Spence PLC proudly accepted the overall award as Sri Lanka’s most socially responsible company in reporting, at the recently held ACCA’s Sustainability Reporting Awards. Diesel and Motor Engineering ( DIMO) PLC  carried away the award for Overall Runner Up.

The awards formed the climax of a total of 15 key awards being presented at the awards ceremony.  Adjudged across eight industry categories, corporate stewardship was well evidenced among a collective of over 50 reports submitted for the awards, assessed by a panel of judges assisted by Mr. Franklyn Amerasinghe.

John Keells Holdings PLC & Aitken Spence PLC was the joint winners of the Conglomerates and Diversified category.

The Finance and Insurance category was led by Union Assurance PLC with LB Finance PLC and Citizens Development Business Finance coming in as joint runners up for the category. 

 The General Services category was bagged by Vallibel Power Erathna PLC, whilst   DIMO was once again the winner in the Retail and Trading Category, followed by Talawakelle Tea Estates coming in as the runners up. The Leisure and Connected services was dominated by Aitken Spence Hotel Holdings PLC, with John Keells Hotels PLC taking the Runner Up position.

 NDB won the Banking Category, while Commercial Bank was adjudged the runners up. The Awards also felicitated the SME category, presenting Resus Energy PLC with the winning award.

A special award was introduced this year in collaboration with Biodiversity Sri Lanka to recognize excellence in environmental/biodiversity project implementation This Special award for Bio Diversity Project went to John Keells Holdings PLC with DIMO (Diesel & Motor Engineering PLC) being the runner up.

The Chief Guest for the event, Ms. Eva van Woersem, Deputy Ambassador, Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Colombo, commended ACCA Sri Lanka for taking the initiative in creating a holistic framework and platform for business entities to aspire in producing detailed sustainability and corporate reporting.

President of the Member Network Panel of ACCA Sri Lanka, Mr. Suren Rajakarier in his welcome address stated that Corporate transparency and sustainability reporting were fundamental to the transition to a sustainable economy.  It allowed stakeholders to direct capital towards companies that are providing the innovation, solutions and scale of action needed to meet the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.

He added: “ACCA as a responsible professional body recognized the need to raise awareness and influence businesses to be sustainable. By encouraging these businesses to report how sustainability impacts their business we have been able to make a positive impact in Sri Lanka by recognizing the best reports for the last 15 years. This year in order to assess the impact of initiatives taken by organizations, we introduced a new award in collaboration with Biodiversity Sri Lanka to offer a joint award for excellence in environmental/biodiversity project implementation.We hope this special award will inspire private sector-led biodiversity conservation projects, support national biodiversity conservation efforts and will maximize positive impacts of such projects on conserving and managing the country’s national biodiversity heritage.

Having observed an increasing number of integrated reports being entered into the fray, Mr. Franklyn Amerasinghe stated that the judges noted more strategic thinking in relation to sustainability, which was very encouraging. “A robust sustainability reporting process is ensured when an organization produces an integrated report,” he said.  

“With participants adopting the methodology approved by GRI, most reports check their reports against the GRI G4 which calls for reporting on the material aspects of the business. 

 A new trend is to translate the performance into metrics associated with identified types of capital, falling in line with an integrated approach.  

We hope there will be a movement in this direction which is a universal trend.”

The Panel of Judges comprised of   Franklyn Amerasinghe, Consultant to the Panel of Judges,   Prema Cooray, Ms. Sriyani Hulugalle, Dr. Kennedy D Gunawardana,   Srilal Mittapala,   Dinesh Weerakkody, and Ms. RamaniGunatilaka