Hanoi (VNS/VNA) - Listed companies should find a way to includesustainable development in their business strategies as they seek to improveoperations, experts said on September 30.

Doing sowill make the business more attractive to potential investors and shareholdersas they now pay more attention to green business strategies, according to TranThi Thanh Tu, head of the financial-banking department at the University ofEconomics and Business under the Vietnam National University.

Ascompanies look for financing sources from green investors, it will make theirbusiness more profitable and reputable in the long term, she told a seminar ongreen finance and sustainable development.

However,many of the 200 surveyed companies do not care about sustainable developmentand green finance as they consider the two things “luxury commodities” giventheir limited resources, Tu said.

About 440listed companies were evaluated for last year’s sustainable business awards.However, only 23 firms made it to the final assessment and those firms were thelargest companies by market value.

Some ofthe finalists were the Vietnam Dairy Products JSC (Vinamilk), insurer Bao VietHoldings and the Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Investment and Development ofVietnam (BIDV).

Accordingto Nguyen Viet Thinh, CEO of the Vietnam Institute of Directors, only 11companies last year had independent sustainable development reports, which wasalmost double the number recorded in 2017. But it was still modest compared tothe size of the Vietnamese business community.

Notably,the top 10 companies nominated for the awards had their sustainable developmentreports included in the annual reports. The largest firms by market capitalisationmaintained a good quality of reports for six straight years.

Thinhsaid the sustainable development report must be finalised in the April-Mayperiod and the sooner it gets done the better.

Datashould be collected consistently during the financial year and the reportshould be treated as a long-term opportunity for the business, he added.

Even topcompanies with best sustainable development reports have not performed dataanalytics to see how they have changed through the years, Thinh said.

He suggestedthe board of directors must play a major role in making sustainable developmentstrategies popular to investors and shareholders, thus improving the company’stransparency and corporate governance.

“Theboard of directors must be strongly committed to delivering sustainabledevelopment activities and ensure the company stays on its path towards asustainable business operation,” he said.

Accordingto Nguyen Cong Minh Bao, Director of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)Vietnam, reputational risks and benefits, regulatory requirements and CEO’sdirective, operational risks and benefits, investors’ interests andrequirements, and market growth opportunities are among the most common factorsthat prevent a business from striving towards sustainable development.

Hoang DucHung, deputy director of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Vietnam, told attendeesthat compiling a sustainable development report requires the company to havesufficient human and financial resources.

Small-and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have to establish a specialised unit tomonitor the compilation of sustainable development reports, Hung said.

“Financialand non-financial strategies must be developed within the business. And anyoneresponsible for preparing the firm’s sustainable development report must makesure the system and workflow are passed to the next generations, savingexpenses and workloads for the business.”

“Sustainabledevelopment reports must be standardised so that they are collectable at theend of the year,” Hung said./.