The Securities and Exchange Commission in linking up corporations, government organizations, multilateral and civil society organizations under the Sustainable Enterprise Collaboration Network to further deepen the corporate sector’s participation in sustainability initiatives and accelerate the country’s attainment of the United Nations sustainable development goals (UN SDG).
Network members push for collaboration and participation in knowledge-sharing activities and in policy advocacy initiatives to help one another integrate and adopt sustainable practices in their operations. Members also work toward ensuring the 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.
“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,” SEC chairman Emilio B. Aquino said.
“We believe 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 said.
The eSECnature campaign also focuses on digital enablement to reduce the corporate sector’s overall carbon footprint.
Since 2020, the SEC has pursued sustainability through digital transformation in a bid not only to make its operations more sustainable but also to improve the ease of doing business.
The digital platforms launched early on include the Electronic Simplified Processing of Application for the Registration of Companies (eSPARC), its subsystem One day Submission and E-registration of Companies (OneSEC); Electronic Filing and Submission Tool (eFAST); and Electronic System for Payment to SEC (eSPAYSEC).
These services automate the key processes in company registration, reports submission, and payment of fees.
These are estimated to have reduced the SEC’s carbon footprint by over 3,500 tons from 2021 to 2023. It also saved more than 10,000 trees, equivalent to 85 million sheets of paper that would have been used in manual transactions.
The SEC is set 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.
