Companies Commission of Malaysia: CSR Is More Than Philanthropy

The Companies Commission of Malaysia (CCM) has called the corporate world needs to go beyond philanthropy and embrace corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a core business value to ensure sustainable development, according to the Edge Malaysia.

Its corporate development and policy division director, Azryain Borhan, was reported to have said there was a misconception that CSR was limited to monetary contributions. He was quoted as saying at a panel session at the SC-Bursa Malaysia Corporate Governance Week (CG Week) in early July:

CSR is a component of good corporate governance (CG). To ensure sustainability, a company needs to integrate CSR into its core practices… Many companies have the wrong notion that CSR is just signing cheques for charities. CSR is more than that. For example, engineers in a company could be engaged to give maths tuition at an orphanage.

Azryain was one of three panellists speaking at the session entitled “Beyond Governance, Enter Sustainability”.

The other panellists at the session were PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos sustainability services leader Andrew Chan and Unicef Asia Pacific private sector fund-raising and partnership regional chief David Girling.

Azryain also was reported to have said that CCM is committed to its five-year plan to help companies develop a CSR strategy and help them build a shareholder engagement framework. CCM is also working with Unicef to create a sustainable environment for children in companies.