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As per the Egyptian Exchange (EGX) efforts to support sustainable development, enhancing transparency frameworks and to be compatible with international standards, EGX signed yesterday on the "United Nations (U.N.)’ initiative to work for the climate" that comes in the framework of the U.N. Convention on Climate Change, by adhering to the "investors’ database to work for the climate".
Each of the following are working to improve the database : The Financial Initiative of the U.N. program for environment “UNEP-Finance Initiative”, and the Initiative of “Principles for Responsible Investment- PRI”, and a number of initiatives and investors concerned with the climate change.
EGX’ signage on the initiative is concerned to be committed to promote for the mechanisms reducing carbon emissions and to improve the climate state, in the framework of raising awareness about the importance to include the environmental, social and governance standards in the institutions and companies’ decisions. Moreover it’s a commitment to apply the main principles of the initiative which are : the commitment to provide greater transparency with regard to the measurement of carbon emissions - the development of corporate governance and disclosure of climate risk - the commitment to work with governments, organizations and other key parties to activate the work in the community on the environmental, societal and governance issues - re-direct investments toward a low-carbon activities - strengthen accountability and transparency to inform the public regularly about these principles’ implementation.
In a related context and along with the success of EGX’ first sustainability annual conference that was held in October 2015 with the participation of a number of international organizations and institutions, particularly the U.N., the World Bank and the World Federation of Exchanges. And with the presence of a large number of representatives of the business sector, civil society, and international organizations, where Dr. Mohammad Omran, EGX Chairman announced the formation of an advisory committee for sustainability that includes a number of sustainable development experts from a group of active institutions and companies in the market and society, headed by EGX chairman.
Dr. Mohammad Omran said that the Sustainability Advisory Committee will provide the necessary advise on this important issue to ensure the availability of responsible investment and sustainable financing, with the need to coordinate efforts of all of the market participants presented in the Committee for the purpose to improve the capital market working conditions in a way to include more governance, social and environmental responsibility which are the three pillars of sustainability. Dr. Omran said that the Committee will develop measurable standards to verify the sustainable development goals’ achievement and will seriously contribute to the issuance of a reference model for corporate disclosure on sustainability performance before the end of 2016. It is expected that this committee will contribute to raise EGX’ ability to manage the sustainability issue with the effective participation of the market’ parties, specially as the formation of the committee reflects the multiplicity of actors in the sustainability system. The Committee consists of representatives from each of the listed companies, brokerage firms, non-profit organizations, civil society organizations, and finally from leading non-listed companies in sustainability.
From his part, Dr. Omran declared that EGX will strongly contribute to support and disseminate the sustainability applications in the business sector, pointing that the development issue is no longer the responsibility of the government alone, but must combine the community's efforts as a whole in order to achieve them, topped by the private sector, saying that studies exhibits that the business community adoption of sustainable development would lead to a significant improvement in the country's economic growth rates.
