AUDITOR-GENERAL Mildred Chiri will on Thursady next week headline a day-long indaba to advance adoption of integrated corporate sustainability reporting that foster public disclosure organised by Institute of Chartered Accountants of Zimbabwe (ICAZ) in partnership with The Institute for Sustainability Africa (INŚAF).

The virtual event seeks to equip company executives with appropriate understanding of corporate sustainability reporting skills to enable better implementation.

Corporate sustainability reporting is a practice embedding social and governance (ESG) issues into business practices, decisionmaking, leadership responsibility, management systems, corporate reporting and business strategy of organisations for value creation and contribution to sustainable development.

The Public Entities Corporate Governance Act [Chapter 10:31] details the requirements for integrated and sustainability reporting for public entities.

This includes the applicable standards, roles of the board and various other recommendations. Listed entities also have Statutory Instrument 134 of 2019, Securities and Exchange (Zimbabwe Stock Exchange Listing Requirements) Rules, 2019 detailing the requirements for ‘sustainability information and disclosure’.

This provides for board and executive responsibility. Sustainability reporting helps organisations improve competitive advantage, manage costs, improve risk management, build stakeholder capital and drive innovations.

“As such, ICAZ and INŚAF will be hosting a webinar on 20th May 2021 at 1430hrs and is inviting nonexecutive directors, executives, directors, finance directors and board chairpersons to develop appropriate understanding on corporate sustainability reporting to enable better implementation. The event comes along the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) Foundation’s drive for sustainability reporting along with financial reporting,” ICAZ technical manager Owen Mavengere told NewsDay Business.

“The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Zimbabwe (ICAZ) in partnership with The Institute for Sustainability Africa (INŚAF) will advance adoption of integrated corporate sustainability reporting to foster public disclosure of economic, environmental, social and governance (ESG) impacts and opportunities in Zimbabwe.”

Other speakers set to grace the event include Roy Chimanikire (Econet Wireless deputy CEO), Clive Macheka (enterprise-wide risk management officer at Old Mutual), Duduzile Shinya (ICAZ president/ ZIDA CFO), Justice Bgoni (ZSE CEO), Rodney Ndamba (CEO INSAF) and Elizabeth Rabvukwa (Zimnat) investments cluster CEO)