KPMG finds dramatic rise in level of CR reporting

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

KPMG finds dramatic rise in level of CR reporting

The 2005 international survey on corporate responsibility reporting, conducted by KPMG International's Global Sustainability Services and the University of Amsterdam, has found a dramatic rise in the number of top global companies producing CR reports.

The survey, the fourth in a triennial series, found that CR reporting has been on the increase since 1993, with a particularly substantial rise over the last three years.

In 2002, 52 percent of G250 companies issued separate CR reports, an increase of 7 percent since 2002. If the figures for 2005 are adjusted to include those companies that published CR information as part of their annual report, they rise to 64 percent and 41 percent respectively. The type of reports being produced has also undergone significant change, with a shift from environmental, health and safety reports (70 percent of both global and national reports in 2002) to social, environmental and economic sustainability reports (70 percent of G250 reports in 2005).

Japan and the UK are the current leaders in producing separate CR reports (at 80 percent and 71 percent of companies respectively), although Japan has experienced fairly slow growth in this measure since 2002, an increase of only 8 percent (the number of companies producing separate CR reports in the UK has risen by 22 percent since 2002).

Canada and France follow Japan and the UK at some distance, with the number of companies producing CR reports in these countries at 41 percent and 40 percent respectively. The worst performers in this respect were Norway (15 percent) and Belgium (9 percent).

In terms of industry sectors, finance (which has traditionally had much a lower incidence of CR reporting - perhaps unsurprisingly, given its nature) has shown the highest increase in recent years.

While the oil and gas industry has been at the forefront of environmental and sustainability reporting for years, around half of this has been included in these companies' annual reports rather than separately. Still, the total percentage of G250 oil and gas companies providing some form of CR reporting is high at 80 percent, up 22 percent from 2002.

“Economic and ethical considerations” and increased pressure from stakeholders for non-financial information, were found to be the main drivers of the increase in reporting.
The full survey can be downloaded from: http://www.kpmg.com/Rut2000_prod/Documents/9/Survey2005.pdf.

Blogged on 3:24 AM by Upay

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