ISOS Group Global, SRL is the Romanian subsidiary of ISOS Group, LLC with offices in Bucharest and Prahova County. In Romania, our services also include proposal development, project management, implementation, and trainings focused on sustainability directives on the national level and from the European Union. Many of those directives require transparent sustainability reporting (SR), which we have found to be almost absent from business as we know it in Romania.
Many developed nations have now taken hold of this method for transparency and are even starting to leverage political weight in favor of compliance. However, sustainability efforts are still so new that there are few studies conducted to assess positive impacts, challenges, or trends related to this new style of reporting. As a matter of fact, KPMG recently issued a report that confirmed the need for 1) more formal reporting and for 2) reporters to pursue potential opportunities that could come from making their reports available to mainstream investors and market analysts.
In the case of Romania, the best performers in the N100 are oil and gas, and trade and retail. But according to KPMG, the sectors are both weak in their ability to produce corporate responsibility reports. One of the most significant findings of the survey was that there was a difference in commitment to corporate responsibility reporting between multinational companies operating in Romania, which are more active in reporting, and Romanian-owned companies, which have less interest. Based on this, KPMG concluded that “Romanian companies are less mature than global companies when it comes to disclosing non-financial information voluntarily”. This is a great disadvantage to Romanian companies wanting to compete internationally, or even interact with multi-nationals.
The fundamental objectives of the National Strategy for Sustainable Development portray the need for an increased standard of living and prosperity for individuals and society as a whole at the national level; economic development within the sustainability limits determined by the natural capital in a way that should guarantee the quality of life for future generations. To be more specific, main objectives included the following:
- To guarantee public health. To ensure complementary and correlation among all economic and social sectors for the purpose of sustainable human development.
- To establish those sectors that could potentially be competitive as priorities for sustainable development in the context of the overall international trends and in accordance with the international commitments Romania has made.
- To adjust the size of social and economic structures, to reshape them and to transform them into a sustainable system. To ensure the continuous and stable improvement of the standard of living in accordance with the requirements of E.U. integration.
- To stop the deterioration of the country’s natural capital and to start rebuilding it.
- To develop a coherent legislative and institutional framework, compatible with that of the E.U. countries, and to consolidate democracy by encouraging civic participation.
- To create human resources meeting the international scientific, technological and information standards in all social and economic sectors.
- To ensure continuous monitoring and evaluation of economic, social and ecological performance within a system of quantitative and qualitative indicators.
In each objective set forward, sustainability was given priority in taking the necessary steps towards ensuring future livelihoods for Romanians. Romania is no different than other countries operating in the 21st Century and as Central and Eastern European economies open and grow, so too will a commitment to corporate responsibility. In just three years since KPMG’s last performed International Survey of Corporate Responsibility Reporting, the number of companies which actually published sustainability reports grew from 50% to 80% out of a total 2200 businesses surveyed. Although less than a quarter of the N100 companies in Romania surveyed by KPMG actively report, the respected consultancy firm continues to regard the country as one to watch. Romanian companies are eager to show that they are on par with Western European expectations regarding the environment and human rights. First movers in this region are distinguishing themselves from competitors in the local and global marketplaces with corporate responsibility, and reporting as a channel they can use to showcase industry best practice and signify their recognition of Romania’s National Strategy for Sustainable Development. Ultimately, the first step lies within the foundations of a reporting structure. What you can measure, you can manage; what you can manage, you can change!
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
