The Tunis Stock Exchange, the Financial Market Council (CMF) and the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS), launched, on Thursday, the new environmental, social and governance reporting (ESG) guide.
“This guide is addressed on the one hand to directors, executives and managers of listed companies, and on the other hand to stakeholders of the company (auditors, staff representatives, shareholders, investors ….), CEO of the Tunis Stock Exchange Bilel Sahnoun said at an information day to present this new ESG Guide and the opportunities they offer to listed companies.
For him, this guide is supposed to convince all these actors of the usefulness of the ESG approach both for themselves, for the company, and for the community.
He explains that the objectives are to identify, unify and structure extra-financial communications, in addition to the implementation of a key performance indicator, to unify the reading and interpretation for analysis, classification and comparability purposes.
In concrete terms, the aim is to finally create an ESG index to address and attract responsible investment funds or those sensitive to green finance.
This instrument will allow companies to seize the opportunity of green finance, knowing that of the 1.5 billion dollars captured by the MENA region, Tunisia benefits from barely 1% ($ 15 million) mainly through the programs of the National Agency for Energy Management (ANME), while 50% of this amount is allocated to Morocco and $ 400 million are intended for Egypt.
The DG of IACE recalled, for his part, that if the company is a supplier or partner of Europe, it will have more and more constraints in energy efficiency, emission of greenhouse gases, decarbonation, gender equality, social conditions and modes of governance.
“We all know that there will be an alignment between finance and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set up by the United Nations,” he said, pointing out that this alignment will bring to the Tunisian market more transparency and a reduction in the asymmetry of information through extra-financial communication.
Positive impact for Tunisian companies
He further said that the ESG policies adopted by companies have achieved a rate of recovery of 30% of their securities.
For his part, the chairman of the Financial Market Council (CMF), Salah Sayel, said the introduction, through the ESG guide, of this new concept of extra-financial reporting in the context of the Tunisian stock market, will positively impact Tunisian companies.
He recalled that the extra financial reporting includes all actions taken by a company beyond its legal obligations to contribute to sustainable development issues, on social, environmental and economic levels.
Still according to Sayel, the CMF as guarantor of transparency on the financial market will closely monitor the evolution of practices to ensure the relevance and quality of information available to the public in general and investors in particular.
During his speech, the Resident Representative of the International Finance Corporation (IFC) in Tunisia, Georgeos Joseph Ghorra, emphasized the importance of the ESG guide which remains essential to secure financing from the IFC.
“This new guide, the first publication of its kind in Tunisia, reflects the willingness of the country to occupy a strategic position in terms of ESG to be in line with the best global standards and attract foreign investment, “he said.
