The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) eyes better coordination between the government and the private sector in accelerating the country’s attainment of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).
On Monday, the SEC unveiled its Sustainable Enterprise Collaboration Network (eSECnature) which will guide companies and members of the public and private sector towards a more sustainable capital market and business sector.
The SEC said through eSECnature, members of the network will be able to participate in knowledge-sharing activities, as well as policy advocacy initiatives to help companies integrate and adopt sustainable practices in their operations.
eSECnature will also ensure companies will engage in ethical and responsible conduct of business operations and advocacies, reducing their carbon footprint, and supporting the digitalization, zero-contact, and paperless initiatives of the government, according to the SEC.
“Through this network, we aim to unite organizations both in the public and private sectors to collaborate in developing best practices, new ideas, and successful strategies toward our vision of a sustainable capital market and business sector,” said Emilio Aquino, SEC chairman.
“We believe that the adoption of sustainable practices will have a significant impact in improving the state of our capital markets and, more importantly, the economy. As we see more companies comply with ESG standards, we can look forward to the entry of more investments into the country that can further drive our economic growth,” he added.
The eSECnature campaign also focuses on digital enablement to reduce the corporate sector’s overall carbon footprint.
Aquino said since 2020, the SEC has worked to pursue sustainability through digital transformation in a bid to not only make its operations more sustainable as well as to improve the ease of doing business.
These efforts are estimated to have reduced the SEC’s carbon footprint by over 3,500 tons from 2021 to 2023.
“In the same period, it was also able to save more than 10,000 trees, equivalent to about 85 million sheets of paper that would have been used in manual transactions,” Aquino said.
The SEC is slated to launch five new digital initiatives this week to further make stakeholders’ transactions easier in line with sustainability efforts.
“The pursuit of sustainability is part of the Commission’s mandate to promote good corporate governance among the sector it oversees,” Aquino said.
