ESG Handbook Launched to Help Businesses Improve Sustainability Strategies

To help businesses adopt and report on Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG), the Ministry of Finance jointly launched the ESG Handbook. This guide will assist businesses in integrating ESG into their strategies and ensuring transparent information disclosure.

With the handbook, businesses can access guidelines, reference practices and reference sources to incorporate ESG factors into their governance and operational strategies, helping them respond to risks and capture opportunities of sustainable development. Hence, the handbook will help them improve their capacity to disclose sustainable development information to ensure their compliance with relevant regulations and leading domestic and international ESG practices while minimizing risks and seizing ESG-generated opportunities, especially access to green financial resources.

Besides tools and reference sources for ESG adoption, the handbook guides steps of sustainability reporting and principles of sustainability reporting.

In particular, specific guidelines on ESG adoption and reporting framework for finance, real estate and construction sectors are also introduced to support businesses in applying the ESG framework provided in the handbook into industry practices. These sectors need to prioritize ESG adoption due to the urgency of sustainable transformation as they have huge economic impacts (e.g. exports and loans), huge environmental impacts (e.g. greenhouse gas emissions, water use and waste discharge) and social impacts (e.g. employment and occupational safety.)

Mr. Nguyen Duc Trung, Deputy Director of the Department of Private Enterprise Development and Collective Economy (under the Ministry of Finance) said: “In the context of globalization and climate change with increasingly profound impacts, applying ESG standards is not only a vital requirement but also a guideline for the sustainable development of enterprises and the economy. ESG adoption is not only a trend but also an urgent requirement to improve competitiveness, attract international investment, expand export markets and meet community expectations.”

By Thu Ha, Vietnam Business Forum